Snowtreader had responded as swiftly as Fafhrd to Cif's whistle, bounding out across the frosty meadow. He stopped before Cif, who was still signaling with her high-held lamp. Then his eyes went to bent-over Pshawri and the object hanging oddly from the lieutenant's rock-steady hand. He sniffed at it gingerly and suspiciously, gave a whine of recognition, and hurried on across the meadow a dozen more yards with his nose close to the ground, then paused to look back and bark twice.

Cif lowered her lamp at Fafhrd's answering signal from the shaft head. Pshawri appealed to her, “Would you mark this spot here, Lady? I think we should follow Snowtreader's lead and hurry on while the scent is hot, dowsing at intervals."

Using her dagger pommel for a hammer, she drove into the ground over which Pshawri had been hovering one of the small stakes they'd brought and tied to it a short length of gray ribbon from her pouch. She said, “I think you're right. Though while I was signaling I had the thought that the cinder we're dowsing with is Loki's. It might he guiding us toward him rather than Mouser, and I know from experience what wild goose hunts, what weird will-o'-the-wisp chases that god might lead us on."

“No, Lady,” Pshawri assured her, “it's the Captain's signals I'm getting. I know his vibes. And Snowtreader would never confuse him with that tricksy stranger god. What's more, the dog didn't howl this time, as he did so dolefully when the moon was high, but only whined—a sign he's scenting a live thing, no carrion corpse."

Cif observed, “You're awfully fond of the Captain, aren't you? I pray Skama you're right. Lead on, then. The others will catch up."

She was referring to the five dark forms between her and the cookfire and the other lights around the shaft head: Rill, Skullick, Groniger, Ourph, and Mother Grum, all grown curious. Beyond them and the little lights round the shaft head, the setting moon was just touching the horizon, as though going to earth amongst Rime Isle's central hills.

Back at the now-lonely cookfire Fafhrd poured himself a half mug of simmering gahvey, tempered it with brandy, drank half of that off in one big hot swallow, and set himself to think shrewdly and systematically of the Gray Mouser's plight, as he'd told Afreyt he would.

He discovered almost at once that his whirling, plunging thoughts and fancies were not to be tamed that way.

Nor did the rest of the mug's contents, taken at a gulp, enforce tranquillity and logic upon stormy disorder.

He paced around in a circle, breaking off when he found himself beginning to twist, jerk, and stamp in a frenzy of control-seeking.

He shook his fingers in front of his face, as if trying to conjure things from empty air.

In a sudden frantic reversal of attitude he asked himself whether he really wanted to rescue the Mouser at all. Let the Gray One escape by his own devices. He'd managed it often enough in the past, by Kos!

He'd have liked to measure his wilder imaginings against Rill's practicality, Groniger's sturdy reason, Mother Grum's dogmatic witch-reasonings, or Ourph's Mingol fatalism. But they'd all traipsed off after the dowsers. He'd told Afreyt he wanted solitude, but now he asked himself how was a man to think without talking? He felt confused, light-headed, light in other ways, as if a puff of wind might knock him down.

He looked at the things around him: the fire, the soup, the piled lumber, the girls’ clothes warming, the shelter tent, its cots.

He didn't need to talk to children, he told himself. Let them sleep. He wished he could.

But his strange nervousness grew. Finally, to discharge it in action, he seized a fresh brandy jug with his right hand, hooked up a lamp with his other upper extremity, set out across the meadow after the dowsers.

He walked unevenly, veering and correcting himself. He wasn't sure he wanted to catch up with the dowsers. But he had to be moving, or else explode.

In the cozy nest from which she'd been watching Fafhrd's every action, Fingers roused Gale by yanking the pale tuft of her fine maiden hair. “That hurt, you fiend,” the Rimish girl protested, rubbing her eyes. “No one else ever summoned me from slumber so."

“It hurts most where you love most,” the cabin-girl recited as by rote, continuing in livelier tones, “I knew you'd want to be wide awake, dear demon, to hear the latest news of your hero uncle with the growly name."

“Fafhrd?” Gale was all attention.

“The same. He's just come out of the hole, cavorted around the fire, and now taken a lamp and a jar and gone off after your dark-haired aunt who's dowsing for your other uncle. I think he's fey and wants watching over."

“Where are our clothes?” Gale asked at once, squirming half out of the nest.

“The lady with the scarred hand set them to warm close by the fire before they all went off ahead of Fafhrd. Come on, I'll race you."

“Someone will see us.” Gale clapped her slender forearm across her barely budded breasts.

“Not if we rush, Miss Prim and Proper."

The two girls streaked to the fire through the frigid air and, looking around and giggling the while, hurried into their toasty clothes as swiftly as if they'd both been sailors. Then they moved out hand in hand, following Fafhrd's lamp, while the last sliver of full moon hid itself behind Rime Isle's central hills and the sky paled with the first hint of dawn.

The Mouser struggled awake from darkest depths. The process seemed to involve toilsome stages of marginal consciousness, but when he finally—and quite suddenly—felt himself fully master of his mind, he found his body sprawled at full length with his bent head pillowed on the crook of his left elbow and the bracing reek of salt sea filling his nostrils.

For a blessed moment he supposed himself to be abed in his trim room in the Salthaven barracks built last year by his men and Fafhrd's, and with the window open to the cool, damp morning breeze.

His first attempted movement shattered that illusion. He was in the same dreadful plight he'd been when his awareness had last ebbed away to chthonic darkness while he was most effortfully fleeing Death's skinny sister Pain.

Except his plight had worsened—he'd lost the strange power of movement he'd had then, of laborious crabwise retreat. That seemed to depend, for its generation, upon extremes of terror.

And the sea stink was new. That must he coming from the grainy earth that gripped him viselike. And that earth was now perceptibly damp. Which must in turn mean that his flight had led him to the Rime Isle coast, to the sea's fringes. Perhaps he was already under the cold, tumultuous, merciless waters of the boundless Outer Sea.

And he was no longer buried upright but lying flat. Truly it was astonishing what a difference that made. Upright, though as closely confined as a statue by its mold, one felt somehow free and on guard. Whereas lying flat, whether supine or prone, was the posture of submission. It made one feel utterly helpless. It was the very worst—

No, he interrupted himself, don't exaggerate. Worse than flat would be buried upside down, heels above head. Best leave off imagining confinements lest he think of one that was still worse.

He set himself to do the same routine things he'd done after his earlier underground lapse of consciousness—regularize and maximize his furtive breathing, assure himself of the continuing glow about his eyes and of his seeming occult power to see, albeit somewhat dimly, for some yards all around him.

The way his head was bent, he found he was looking down his body, along his legs and past his feet. He wished he had a wider range of vision, yet at least there was no blue and chalky female form pursuing him sharklike from that direction.

It was really unnerving, though, how defenseless his flat attitude made him feel, all ready to be trampled, or spat upon, or skewered with pitchfork.

He'd had previous strayings into the realm of Death without his nerve failing, he reminded himself, straining for reassurance and to keep panic at bay. There'd been that time in Lankhmar when he'd entered the magic shop of the Devourers and laid down fearlessly in a black-pillowed coffin and also walked quite eagerly into a mirror that was a vertical pool of liquid mercury held upright by mighty sorceress.

But he'd been drunk and girlstruck then, he reminded himself, though at the time the mercury had felt cool and refreshing (not grainy and suffocating like this stuff!), and he'd afterward nursed the private conviction that he'd been about to discover a secret heroes’ heaven high above the one reserved for the gods when Fafhrd had jerked him out of the silver fluid.

No matter. His present friends and lovers, he told himself, must be working like beavers right now to effect his recovery, either by digging (there were enough of them surely) or by working some magic or supernal deal. Perhaps right at this moment dear Cif was manipulating the Golden Ikons of the Isle as she had last year when his mind had been trapped in the brain of a sounding whale.

Or Fafhrd might have figured out some trick to get him back. Though the great oaf had hardly looked capable of such when Mouser had last seen him, goggling down bewilderedly at his disappearing comrade.

Yet how would any of them know where to dig for him, the way he'd moved around? Or be able to dig for him at all, if he were already beneath the Outer Sea?

Which reminded him in turn that according to the most ancient legends, Simorgya had invaded Rime Isle in prehistoric times by way of long, long tunnels leading under the wild waves. That was before the more southern isle sank beneath the billows and its cruel inhabitants grew gills and fins.

A fantasy, no doubt, old witches’ tales. Yet if such tunnels ever had existed, he was surely in the right place to find them now, Rime Isle's south coast. Or find at least one—surely that was not hoping too much. And so as he industriously sipped air through barely parted lips from the dank earth enfolding him, exhaling in little puffs more forcibly than he inhaled, to drive back intrusive moist granules, he became aware of a pale green undulation parallel to his body some three yards out from him, as though something were moving back and forth out there, up and down a narrow corridor, while it closely regarded him. After a time it resolved itself into the dainty form of the Simorgyan demoness Ississi, not more than a quarter—nay, hardly an eighth!—of the way through her girl-fish shape-change: there was the barest hint of a crest along her spine, and the merest suggestion of webs joining the roots of her slender fingers, and only the slightest green tinge to her glorious complexion, she of the large yellow-green eyes and lisping seductive speech, who'd been so amenable to harshest discipline, at least for quite a while. And she seemed to be wearing a filmy rainbow robe composed of the tatters and rags of the costly, colorful, fine fabric destroyed during his final submarine bout with her when Seahawk had sunk for a space.

For a moment his dissolving skepticism reasserted itself as he asked himself how he could be so certain it was indeed Ississi in this hazy realm where any fish (or girl, for that matter) looked very much like the next (and both like phantoms woven of greenish smoke). But even as he posed that question, the vision became more real, each winsome feature more clearly defined. What's more, he realized he was in no way frightened of her despite the circumstances of their encounter. In fact, as his eyes moved slowly back and forth as they followed her to and fro, he found himself growing drowsy, the regular movement was so restful. He even found himself developing the illusion (surely it must be one?) that his entire body, not just his eyes, was moving slowly forward and back in unison with hers, as if it had unbeknownst to himself escaped into a corridor or tunnel parallel with hers and was afloat in the unresistant air!

Just at that moment he received a shock which caused him sharply to revise any opinion he may have entertained about one young female being very much like the next—or one fish, for that matter. Although he had not seen Ississi's half-smiling lips close up or pucker in any way, he heard a trilling, soft, seductive whistle.

Looking sharply down along his legs and beyond his feet, he saw the blue-streaked chalky form of Sister Pain advancing toward him in a tigerish rush with talons spread out to either side of her grinning narrow face and eyes aglow with red sadistic fire.

Confirming an earlier intuition of his as well as his guess about the tunnels, without any physical effort on his part, but a tremendous mental one, he began to move away from her at the same speed with which she came horrendously on, so that they both were flashing through the grainy yet utterly unresistant earth at nightmare speed, and Ississi's figure vanished behind them in a trice....

No, not quite. For it seemed to the Mouser that at that point his pursuer paused for an instant while her blue-pied flesh drank up the other's pale green substance, superadding Ississi's fishy duties to her own dire hungers before coming again horrifically on.

He was dearly tempted to glance forward to get some clue to where they were hastening beneath the Outer Sea, for they were trending deeper, yet dared not do so for fear that in trying to dodge some barely glimpsed seeming obstacle, he'd dash himself into the rocky walls flashing by so close. No, best trust himself to whatever mighty power gripped him. However blind, it knew more than he.

There whipped past the dark mouth of an intersecting tunnel leading southward if he'd kept his bearings, he judged. To Simorgya? In which case, whither did this branch he was careening through extend? To No-Ombrulsk? Beyond that, under land, to the Sea of Monsters? To the dread Shadowland itself, abode of Death?

What use to speculate when he had yielded up control of his movements to the whirlwind? Against all reasonable expectations, he found his great speed lulling despite the pearly flash and fleeting glow of sea fossils. Perhaps at this very moment, for all he knew, he was breathing softly back in a snug grave in Rime Isle and dreaming this dream. Even the Great God Himself must have had moments while creating the universe or ‘verses when He was absolutely certain He was dreaming. All's well, he mused. He dropped off.

Cif insisted on repeating Pshawri's next reading as their dowsing led them back across the Great Meadow, dangling the cinder cube from her own left-hand ring finger and thumb, and when she got the same result as he had, decided they should alternate taking readings thereafter. He submitted to this arrangement with proper grace, but couldn't quite conceal his nervousness whenever the magic pendulum was out of his hands, at such times watching her like a hawk.

“You're jealous of me about the Captain, aren't you?” she rallied the young lieutenant, though not teasingly.

He considered that soberly and answered with equal frankness, “Well, yes, Lady, I am—though in no way challenging your own far greater and different claim on his concern. But I did meet him before you did, when he recruited me in Lankhmar for his band before ever he outfitted Flotsam and set sail for Rime Isle."

“You forget,” she corrected him gently, “that before your enlistment the Lady Afreyt and I journeyed to Lankhmar to hire him and Fafhrd in the Isle's defense, though on that occasion we were swiftly raped back to this polar clime by Khahkht's icy blast."

“That's true,” he allowed. “Nevertheless...” He seemed to think better of it.

“Nevertheless what?"

“I was going to say,” he told her somewhat haltingly, “that I think he was aware of me before that time. After all, we were both freelance thieves, though he infinitely my superior, and that means a lot in Lankhmar, where the Guild's so strong, and there were other reasons ... Well, anyway, I knew his reputation."

Cif had just completed a reading and clutched the cinder cube in her right hand, not having yet put it in her pouch nor passed it on to him for like securing. She was about to ask Pshawri, “What other reasons?” but instead lost herself in study of his broody features, which were just becoming visible in the gray light without help of the white glow of the lamp, which sat on the ground next where she had dowsed.

Only Astarion, Nehwon's brightest star, was still a pale dot in the dawn-violet heavens, and would soon be gone. Ahead of them but off to their left (for their dowsing was gradually turning them south of the path their party had traveled last evening) a blanket of fog risen from the ground hid all of Salthaven but the highest roofs and the pillars and wind-chime arch of the Moon Temple, tinied by distance. The fog lapped higher round those objects as they watched and, although there was no wind, advanced toward them, whitely distilled from earth. Its far edge brightened where the sun would rise, although a squadron of clouds cruising above had not yet caught its rays.

“It must be cold for the Captain down there below,” Pshawri breathed with an involuntary shudder.

“You are most deeply concerned about him, aren't you?” Cif observed. “Beyond the ordinary. I've noticed it for the past fortnight. Ever since you received a missive inscribed in violet ink and sealed with green wax, carried on the last trader before Weasel in from Lankhmar."

“You have sharp eyes, Lady,” he voiced.

“I saw it when Captain Mouser emptied the mail pouch. What is it, Pshawri?"

He shook his head. “With all respect, Lady, it is a matter that concerns solely the Captain and myself—and one other. I cannot speak of it without his leave."

“The Captain knows about it?"

“I do not think so. Yet I can't be sure."

Cif would have continued her queries, although Pshawri's reluctance to answer more fully seemed genuine and deep-rooted—and more than a little mysterious—but at that moment the five from the fire caught up with them and the mood for exchanging confidences was lost. In fact, Cif and Pshawri felt rather on exhibition, for during the next couple of dowsings each of the newcomers had to see for themselves close up the wonder of the heavy cube cinder hanging out of true, straining away from the shaft head definitely though slightly. In the end even skeptical Groniger was convinced.

“I must believe my eyes,” he said grudgingly, “though the temptation not to is strong."

“It's harder to believe such things by day,” Rill pointed out. “Much easier at night."

Mother Grum nodded. “Witchcraft is so."

The sun had emerged by then, beating a yellow path to them across the top of the fog, which strangely persisted.

And both Cif and Pshawri had to answer questions about the cord's subtle vibrations imperceptible to sight.

“It's just there,” she said, “a faint thrilling."

“I can't tell you how I know it's from the Captain,” he had to admit. “I just do."

Groniger snorted.

“I wish I could be as sure as Pshawri,” Cif told them at that. “For me it doesn't sign his name."

Two more dowsings brought them within sight of Rime Isle's south coast. They prepared to dowse a third time a few paces short of where the meadow grew bare and sloped down rockily and rather sharply for some ten more paces to the narrow beach lapped by the wavelets of the Outer Sea. To the west this small palisade grew gradually steeper and approached the vertical. To the east the stubborn fog reached to within a bowshot of them. Farther off they could spy rising from its whiteness the tops of the masts of the ships riding at anchor in Salthaven's harbor or docked at its wharves.

It was Pshawri's turn to dangle the cube cinder. He seemed somewhat nervous, his movements faster, though steady enough as he locked into position with legs bent, right eye centered over the finger juncture pinching the cord.

Cif and Rill both crouched on their knees close by, so as to observe the pendulum from the side at eye level. They seemed about to make an observation, but Pshawri from his superior vantage point forestalled them.

“The bob no longer pulls southeast,” he rapped out in a quick strident voice, “but drags down straight and true."

There were low hisses of indrawn breaths and a “Yes!” from Rill. Cif suggested at once that she repeat his reading, and he gave her the pendulum without demur, though his nervousness seemed to increase. He stationed himself between her and the water. The others completed a ragged circle around her. Rill still crouched close.

After a pause, “Still straight down,” Cif said, with another “Yes,” from Rill. “And the vibration."

Skullick uncorked with, “If the bob slanting means he's moving in that direction, then straight down says that Captain Mouser is below us but not moving just now."

Cif lifted her eyes toward the speaker. “If it is the Captain."

“But the how of all this?” Groniger asked wonderingly, shaking his head.

“Look,” Rill said in a strange voice. “The bob is moving again.” They all eyed another wonder. The bob was swinging back and forth between the direction of the shaft head and the sea, but at least five times as slowly as the period of a pendulum of that length. It crawled its swing.

There was some awe in Skullick's usually irreverent voice. “As if he were pacing back and forth down there. Right now."

“Maybe he's found a sea tunnel,” Mother Grum suggested.

“Those fables,” Groniger growled.

Without warning the gold-glinting dark-colored bob jumped seaward to taut cord's length from Cif's hand. She gave a quick hiss of pain and it sped on, trailing its cord like a comet's tail and narrowly missing Rill's head.

In a diving catch Pshawri interposed the cupped palm of his right hand, which it smote audibly. He clapped his other hand across it as he himself rolled over and came to his feet with both hands tightly cupped together, as if they caged a small animal or large insect, the cord dangling from between them, and walked back to Cif while the rest watched fascinatedly.

Skullick said, almost religiously, “As if, after pacing, the Captain shot off through solid earth under the sea like a bolt of lightning. If such can be imagined."

Groniger just shook his head, a study in sorely tried skepticism. Pshawri said to Cif, lifting his elbows, “Lady, would you please unbutton my pouch for me?"

She was studying the red-scored pads of her left ring finger and thumb, where the cord had taken skin as it had jerked away from between them, but she quickly complied with his instructions, being careful not to use these two digits in the process.

He plunged his cupped hands into his pouch and went on saying, “Now tie the cord around the button—no, through the central button hole of the pouch flap. Use a square knot. Although it is not moving now, this thing is best securely confined. I don't trust it anymore, no matter what it's told us."

Cif followed the further instructions without argument, saying, “I thoroughly agree with you, Lieutenant Pshawri. In fact, I don't think the cinder cube has been tracing the Mouser's movements underground at all, except perhaps at first to start us off."

The knot was firmly tied. As Pshawri withdrew his hands she closed the flap on the pouch and he buttoned its three buttons.

“Then to what power do you think it's responding?” Rill asked, getting to her feet.

“To Loki's,” Cif averred. “I think he wants to lead us on a wild goose chase across the sea. It has all the earmarks of his handiwork: a fascinating lure, strange developments mixed with painful surprises.” She popped her injured finger and thumb into her mouth and sucked them.

“It does seem like his tricksy behavior,” Rill agreed.

“He's an outlaw god, all right,” Mother Grum nodded. “And vengeful. Likely the one who sent Captain Mouser down."

“What's more,” mumbled Cif, talking around her fingers, “I think I know the way to scotch his plots and perhaps return the Mouser to us."

“Dowsers ahoy!” a bright new voice called out. They turned and saw Afreyt coming briskly across the Meadow carrying a hamper woven of reeds.

She went on, “There's news from the digging I thought you all should know, but Cif especially. By the way, where's Fafhrd?"

“We haven't seen him, Lady,” Pshawri told her.

“Why should he be here?” Groniger asked blankly.

“Why, he left off digging to rest and think alone,” Afreyt explained as she reached them and set the hamper on the grass. “But then Udall and another saw him take a jug and lamp and head out after you. They had nothing to do and watched him until he was halfway to you, Udall said."

“We've none of us seen him,” Cif assured her.

“But then where are Gale and Fingers?” Afreyt next asked. “Their cot in the shelter tent was empty and their clothes gone that had been warming beside the fire. I thought they must have followed after Fafhrd, like they'd been doing all night."

“We haven't seen pelt or paws of them either,” Cif insisted. “But what's this news you promised?"

“But then where in Nehwon...” Afreyt began, looking around at the others. They all shook their heads. She told herself, “Leave it,” and Cif, “This should please you, I think. We'd driven the sideways corridor about fifteen paces in ... the digging went faster than straight down—it was a soft sand stretch—and the shoring was easier, despite the added task of roofing ... when we found this embedded halfway up the face."

And she handed Cif a grit-flecked dirk scabbard.

“Cat's Claw's?"

“The same."

“Right!” Cif said as she examined it eagerly.

“And it was lying horizontal, point end toward us,” Afreyt went on, “as if the earth had torn it from his belt as he was being dragged or somehow gotten along, or as though he had left it that way as a clue for us."

“It proves that Captain Mouser's down below, all right,” Skullick voiced.

“It does give weight to the two earlier findings of the dirk and cowl,” Groniger admitted.

“And so you can understand,” Afreyt went on, “why I wanted to tell Fafhrd about it at once. And you, of course, Cif. But what's been happening with the dowsing? What's brought you here to the coast? You surely haven't traced him this far—or have you?"

So Cif told Afreyt how the dowsing had gone and how the bob had tried to escape on the last trial of its powers and was no longer trusted, and also her guess that Loki was behind it all.

Afreyt commented at that, “Fafhrd himself warned me the evidence from dowsing would be uncertain and ambiguous compared with the clues got from actual digging, which he thought should be kept up in any case, to hold open an exit from the underworld for the Gray One at the same point he'd entered it. And you may very well be right about Loki trying to lead us astray. He was a tricksy god, as you know better than I, loving destruction above all else. For that matter, old Odin wasn't reliable either, taking Fafhrd's hand after the loving worship we'd provided him."

Pshawri interposed, “Lady Cif, just before the Lady Afreyt joined us, you said you'd thought of a way to foil Loki's plots and clear the way for Captain Mouser's return."

Cif nodded. “Since the cube cinder is of no use to us as a talisman, I think that one of us should take it and hurl it into the flame pit, the molten lava lake of volcano Darkfire, hopefully returning god Loki to his proper element and perchance assuaging his ire against the Captain."

“And lose forever one of Rime Isle's ikons, the Gold Cube of Square Dealing?” Groniger protested.

“That gold's forever tainted with the stranger god's essence,” Mother Grum informed him, “something I cannot exorcise. Cif's rede is good."

“A golden ikon can be refashioned and resanctified,” old Ourph pointed out. “Not so a man."

“I cannot muster argument against such action, though it seems to me sheerest superstition,” said Groniger wearily. “This morn's events have taken me out of my own element of reason."

“And if it must be done,” Cif went on, “you, Pshawri, are the one to attempt it. You raped the cube cinder from the Maelstrom's maw. You should be the one returns it to the fire."

“If the damned thing will let itself be hurled into the flame pit,” Skullick burst out, his irreverence at last regenerated. “You'll hurl it and it'll take flight the gods know where."

“I'll find a way to constrain it, never fear,” the young lieutenant assured him, an uncustomary iron in his voice. He turned to Cif.

“From my heart's depths I thank you, Lady, for that task. When I wrested that accursed object from the whirlpool, I do now believe I doomed Captain Mouser to his present plight. It is my dearest desire to wipe out that fault."

“Now wait a moment, all of you,” Afreyt cut in. “I am myself inclined to agree with you about the Queller and Darkfire. It strikes me as the wise thing to do. But this is a step may mean the life or death of Captain Mouser. I do not think that we should take it without the agreement of Captain Fafhrd, his lifelong comrade and forever. I wear his ring, it's true, yet in this matter would not speak for him. So I come back to it: where's Fafhrd?"

“Who are these coming toward us from Salthaven?” Rill interrupted in an arresting voice. “If I don't mistake their identities, they may bring news bearing on that question."

The fog blanket to the east was finally breaking up and shredding under the silent bombardment of the sun's bright beams, although the latter were losing a little of their golden strength as the orb mounted and the sky became heavy. Through the white rags and tatters two slight and white-clad figures trudged: who waved their hands and broke into a run upon seeing that they were observed. As they drew closer it was to be seen that the redhead's eyes were large in her small face but the silver-blonde's larger still.

“Aunt Afreyt!” Gale called as soon as they got near. “We've had a great adventure and we've got the most amazing news to tell!"

“Never mind that now,” Afreyt answered somewhat shortly. “Tell us, where's Fafhrd?"

“How did you know?” Gale's eyes grew larger still. “Well, I was going to build up to it, but since you ask right off: Uncle Fafhrd has swum up into the sky to board a cloud ship of Arilia or flag a flier from Stardock. I think he's looking for help in finding Uncle Mouser."

“Stop talking nonsense,” Cif burst out.

“Fafhrd can't swim through air,” Afreyt pointed out.

“Sea tunnels of Simorgya! Cloud ships of Arilia!” Groniger protested. “That's too much nonsense for a cold summer morning."

“But it's what happened,” the girl insisted. “Why, Aunt Afreyt, you yourself saw Fafhrd and Mara flying high through air when the invisible princess Hirriwi of Stardock rescued them from Hellfire on her invisible fish of air. Fingers saw more than I did. She'll tell you."

The Ilthmar cabin-girl said, “Aboard Weasel the sailors all assured me that the strangest sorts of vessels dock at Rime Isle, including the cloud galleons of the Queendom of the Air. And I did see Captain Fafhrd swimming strongly atop the fog toward a cloud that could have been such a vessel."

“Arilia is a fable, child,” Groniger assured her gently. “Sailors tell all sorts of lies. Actually Rime Isle's the least fantastic place in all of Nehwon."

“But Uncle Fafhrd did mount up the sky,” Gale reaffirmed stubbornly. “I don't know how. Maybe Princess Hirriwi taught him to fly and he never told us about it. He's awfully modest. But he did it. We both saw him."

“All right, all right,” Cif told her. “I think you'd best just tell us the whole story from the beginning."

Afreyt said, “But first you need a cup of wine to calm you down and also warm you. You've been long out on a chilly morning that may go down in legend.” She opened her hamper, took out a jug of fortified sweet wine and two small silver mugs, filled them halfway, and made both children drink them down. This led to serving wine to all the others.

Gale said, “Fingers should start it. At the beginning I was asleep.”

Fingers told them, “Captain Fafhrd came back from the diggings just after the rest of you all went off. He drank some gahvey and brandy and began to pace up and down, frowning and rubbing his wrist against his forehead as if he were trying to think out some problem. He got very nervous and fey. Finally he took up a jug, hung a lamp on his hook, and went off after you. I waked Gale and told her I thought he needed watching."

“That's right,” Gale took over. “So we jumped out of bed and ran to the fire and got dressed."

“That explains it,” Afreyt interjected.

“What?” Pshawri asked.

“Why Udall kept watching Fafhrd so long. Go on, dear."

Gale continued, “It was easy to follow Uncle Fafhrd because of his lamp. The darkness was fading anyway, the stars going out. At first we didn't try to catch up with him or let him know we were behind him."

“You were afraid he'd send you back,” Cif guessed.

“That's right. At first he seemed to be following you, but where you turned south he kept straight on east. It was getting quite light now, but the sun was still in hiding. Every so often he'd stop and look ahead at the fog and the rooftops and the wind-chime arch sticking up out of it and lift his head to scan the sky above it—that's when I saw the little fleet of clouds—and raise his hand before his face to invoke the gods and ask their help."

“That was the hand that had the jug in it?” Afreyt asked.

“It must have been,” the girl replied, “for I don't recall the lamp going up and down.

“And then Uncle Fafhrd began to run in the strangest slow way, he seemed to float and almost stop between each step. Of course, we started to run too. We were all into the fog by now, which seemed to slow him and support him at the same time, so his steps were longer.

“The fog got over our heads and hid him from us. We got to the Moon Arch and Fingers started to climb it before I could tell her that was frowned on. She got above the fog and called down..."

Gale stretched a hand toward Fingers, who continued, “Truly, gentles, I saw Captain Fafhrd swimming strongly through the top of the fog, up its long white slope, while a good distance beyond him, the goal of his mighty self-sailing, there was—I know the eyes can be fooled and my mind was full of the sailors’ tales, nevertheless, my word as a novice witch—there was a dense cloud that looked very much like a white ship with a high stern-castle. Sunlight flashed from its silver brightwork.

“Then that same sun got into my eyes and I stopped seeing anything clearly. I'd called some of it down to Gale and I climbed down and told her the rest."

Gale took up again. “We ran through Salthaven to the eastern headland. The fog was breaking up and burning off, but we couldn't see anything clearly. When we got there, the Maelstrom was seething and mists rising from it. But overhead it was clear and I could see Uncle Fafhrd, very high now, beside the white cloud-ship, showing only its keel. There were five gulls around him. Then the mists from below came between us. I thought you should know, Aunt Afreyt. But since it was on the way to the diggings, we decided to tell Aunt Cif first."

Fingers added, “I saw what she saw, gentles. But Captain Fafhrd was very far off then. It could have been a very large marine bird—a sea mandragon escorted by five sea hawks."

The listeners looked at each other.

“This rings true,” Afreyt said quite softly. “I feared that Fafhrd was fey when he was last down the shaft."

“You believe what these girls tell us?” Groniger asked only somewhat incredulously.

“To be sure she does,” Mother Grum answered.

“But why would he go to air folk,” Skullick wanted to know, “to get advice on someone lost underground?"

“You can't guess the designs of a fey one,” Rill told him.

“But what of the Gray Mouser now?” Cif addressed Afreyt. “As Fafhrd's spokeswoman, what say you to sending Pshawri to Darkfire?"

“Let him go, of course, and luck with him. Luck and quietus to Loki,” that lady responded without hesitation. “Here's provisions for you, Lieutenant.” From her hamper she gave him a small loaf and a hard sausage and the near empty sweet-wine jug, which would do to carry cool water he'd get at Last Spring on the way.

After a quick glance to assure himself the others were otherwise occupied, Pshawri said to Afreyt in a low voice, “Lady, would you add to your kindnesses one further favor?” and when she nodded, handed her a folded paper indited in violet ink with broken green seals. “Keep this for me. Should I not return (such things happen), give it to Captain Fafhrd, if he's back. Otherwise read it yourself—and show it to Lady Cif at your discretion."

“I'll do that,” she said softly, and then resuming her normal voice, called, “Cif dear, you'll take over for Fafhrd and me at the digging. I'll give you Fafhrd's ring."

“Can you doubt it?” Cif replied, turning back from Mother Grum, with whom she'd been conferring.

Afreyt went on, “For it's now my turn to do some thinking about a lost one—and to see that these two outwearied girls do some sound sleeping. I'll take them to your place, Cif, and see to all there. Skama, shield me from feyness, except it be your inspiration."

So without more ceremony the three parties separated: Pshawri north toward distant, smoke-trailing Darkfire; Cif, Skullick, and Rill back to the diggings; Afreyt, Groniger, and the weary old and young pairs to Salthaven.

Trudging with the last party, and suddenly looking every bit as tired as Afreyt had described her, Fingers recited as by someone already asleep and dreaming,

"After the dog has eaten out his heart,

The cat his liver, and his secret parts

Uprooted and devoured by the hog,

He shall sleep sounder then than any log,

A shadow prince enrobed by moonlit fog."

“Was that your brother, Princess?” Gale asked, wrinkling her nose. “You know the nicest poems, I must say."

After a moment Afreyt inquired thoughtfully, “But what kind of a poem was it, dear Fingers? Where did it come from?"

Still somewhat in a sleepy singsong, the weary child responded, “It is the augmented third stanza of a Quarmallian death spell effective only in its entirety.” She shook her head and blinked her eyes and came more awake. “Now how did I know that?” she asked. “My mother was born in Quarmall, that is true, but that was another of the things we weren't supposed to tell most people."

“Yet she taught you this Quarmall death spell,” Afreyt stated.

Fingers shook her head decidedly. “My mother never dealt in death spells, nor taught me any. She is a white witch, truly.” She looked puzzledly at Gale and then up at Afreyt and asked, “Why does a memory wink off whenever you try to watch it closely? Is it because we cannot live forever?"

As consciousness next glimmered, glowed, and then shone noontide bright in the Gray Mouser's skull, he would have been certain he was dreaming, for in his nostrils was the smell of Lankhmar earth, richly redolent of the grainfields, the Great Salt Marsh, the river Hlal, the ashes of innumerable fires, and the decay of myriad entities, a unique melange of odors, and he was ensconced in one of the secretmost rooms of all Lankhmar City, one he knew well although he had visited it only once. How could his underground journeying possibly have carried him so far, two thousand leagues or more, one tenth the way at least around all Nehwon world?—except that he had never in his life had a dream in which the furniture and actors were so clearly distinct and open to scrutiny in all their details.

But as we know, it was the Mouser's custom on waking anywhere not to move more than an eye muscle or make the least sound, even that of a deeper breath, until he had taken in and thoroughly mastered the nature of his surroundings and his own circumstances amongst them.

He was comfortably seated cross-legged about a Lankhmar cubit (a forearm's length) behind a narrow low table beside the foot of the wide bed, sheeted in white silk curiously coarse of weave, in the combined underground bedroom and boudoir of the rat princess Hisvet, his most tormenting one-time paramour, daughter of the wealthy grain merchant Hisvin, in the buried city of Lankhmar Below. He knew it was that room and no other by its pale violet hangings, silver fittings, and a half hundred more apposite details, chiefest perhaps two painted panels in the far wall depicting an unclad maiden and crocodile erotically intertwined and a youth and leopardess similarly entangled. As had been the case some five years ago, the room was lit by narrow tanks of glow worms at the foot of the walls, but now also by silver cages hanging cornice-high and imprisoning flashing firebeetles, glow wasps, nightbees, and diamond-flies big as robins or starlings. While on the low table before him rested a silver waterclock with visible pool, upon the center of which a large drop fell every third breath or dozenth heartbeat, making circular ripples, and a cut crystal carafe of pale golden wine, reminding him he was abominably thirsty.

So much for the furniture of his dream, vision, or true sighting. The actors included slim Hisvet herself wearing a violet wrap whose color matched the hangings and her lips. She was seated on the bed's foot, looking as merry and schoolgirl innocent (and devilishly attractive) as always, her fine silver-blond hair drawn through a small ring of that metal behind her head, while standing at dutiful attention close before her were two barefoot maids with hair cropped short and wearing identical closely fitting hip-length black and white tunics. Hisvet was lecturing them, laying out rules of some sort, apparently, and they were listening most earnestly, although they showed it in different ways, the brunette nodding her head, smiling her understandings, and darting her gaze with sharp intelligence, while the blonde maintained a sober and distant, yet wide-eyed expression, as though memorizing Hisvet's every word, inscribing each one in a compartment of her brain reserved for that purpose alone.

But although Hisvet worked her violet lips and the tip of her mottled blue and pink tongue continuously in the movements of speech and lifted an admonitory right forefinger from time to time and once touched it successively on the tips of the outspread fingertips of her supine left hand to emphasize points one, two, three, and four, not a single word could the Gray Mouser hear. Nor did any one of the three ever look once in his direction, even the saucy dark-haired wench whose gaze went everywhere else.

Since both maids in their very short tunics were quite as attractive as their ravishing mistress, their disregard of him began to wound the Mouser's vanity not a little.

Since there seemed nothing for the moment to do but watch them, the Mouser soon developed a hankering to see their naked shapes. So far as the maids were concerned, he might get his wish simply by waiting. Hisvet had a remarkable instinct for such matters and was perfectly willing to let other women entertain for her—distribute her favors, as it were.

But as to her own secret person, it still remained a mystery to the Mouser, whether under the robes, wraps, and armor she affected there was a normal maiden form or a slender rat tail and eight tits, which his imagination pictured as converging pairs of large-nippled and large-aureoled bud-breasts, the third pair to either side of her umbilicus and the fourth close together upon her pubis.

It also was a mystery to him whether the three females and he were all now of rat size or human size—ten inches or five feet high. Certainly he'd had none of the shape-changing elixir that was used in moving between Lankhmar Above and the rat city of Lankhmar Below.

His hankerings continued. Surely he deserved some reward for all the underground perils he'd braved. Women could do men so much good so easily.

There remained the problem of the three women's perfect inaudibility.

Either, he guessed, they were engaged in an elaborate pantomime (plotted by Hisvet to tease him?), or it was a dream despite its realism, or else there was some hermetic barrier (most likely magical) between his ears and them.

Supporting this last possibility was the point that while he could see the giant luminescent insects move about in their cages, striking the silver bars with wing and limb while making their bright shinings and flashes, no angry buzzings or sounds of any sort came down from them; while (most telling of all in its way) only silence accompanied the infrequent but regular plashes of the singular crystalline drops into the shimmering pool of the waterclock so close at hand.

One final circumstance suggestive of magic at work and matching the strange quiet of the scene otherwise so real: miraculously suspended in the air above the near edge of the low table, in a vertical attitude with ring-pommeled small silver grip uppermost, was a tapering whip of white snow-serpent hide scarcely a cubit long, so close at hand he could perceive its finely rugose surface, yet spy no thread or other explanation of its quiet suspension.

Well, that was the scene, he told himself. Now to decide on how to enter it, assert himself as one of the actors. He would lean suddenly forward, he told himself, reach out his right hand, seize with his three bottom fingers the neck of the carafe, unstopper it with forefinger and thumb preparatory to putting it to his parched lips, saying meanwhile something to the effect of, “Greetings, dearest delightful demoiselle, do me the kindness of interrupting this charade to give an old friend notice. Don't be alarmed, girls,” that last being for the two maids, of course.

No sooner thought than done!

But, from the start, things went most grievously agley. On his first move he felt himself gripped by a general paralysis that struck like lightning. His whole front was bruised, his right hand and arm scraped, from every side dark brown grainy walls rushed in upon him, his “Greetings” became on the first syllable a strangled growl that stabbed his ears, pained his whole skull, and changed to a fit of coughing that left him with what seemed a mouthful of raw dirt.

He was still in the same horrid buried predicament he'd been in ever since he'd slipped down out of the full-moon ceremony on Gallows Hill into the cold cruel ground that was at once so strangely permeable to his involuntary passage through it and so adamantly resistant to his attempts to escape it. This time he'd been fooled by the perfection of the occult vision, which let him see through solid earth for a distance around him, into thinking he was free, disregarding the evidence of all his other avenues of awareness. Evidently he had somehow been brought to Lankhmar's underenvirons, and nothing now remained to do but begin anew the slow game of regularizing his breathing, calming his pounding heart, and freeing his mouth grain by grain of the dirt that had entered it during his spasm, carefully working his tongue to best advantage, in order to assure bare survival. For after the pain in his skull subsided he became aware of a general weakness and a wavering of consciousness that told him he was very near the edge between being and not being and must work most cunningly to draw back from it.

During this endeavor he was assisted by the fact that he never quite altogether lost sight of a larger white and violet visual reality around him. There were patchy flashes and glimpses of it alternating with the grainy dark dirt, and he was also helped by the faint yellow glow continuing to emanate from his upper face.

When the Mouser finally re-won all the territory he'd lost by his incautious sally, he was surprised to see fair Hisvet still going through all the motions of talking, and the winsome maids through those of attending her every word, as animatedly as before. Whatever was she saying?

While carefully maintaining all underground breathing routines, he concentrated his attention on other channels of sensation than the visual, seeking to widen and deepen, and bringing to bear all his inner powers, and after a time his efforts were rewarded.

The next heavy drop fell into the pool of the waterclock with an audible dulcet plash! He almost, but not quite, gave a start.

Almost immediately a glow wasp buzzed and a diamond-fly whirred its transparent wings against the wire-thin pale bars.

Hisvet leaned back on her elbows and said in silver tones, “At ease, girls."

They appeared to relax their attention—a little, at any rate.

She tapped three fingers against the ruby rondure of her lips as she yawned prettily. “My, that was a most lengthy and boring lecture,” she commented. “Yet you endured it most commendably, dear Threesie,” she addressed the dark-haired maid. “And you too, Foursie,” she told the fair-haired one. She picked up from beside her a long emerald-headed pin and flourished it playfully. “There was not once the need for me to make use of this upon either of you,” she said, laughing, “to recall to attention the willful wandering mind and wake the lazy dreamer."

Both girls shaped their lips to appreciative smiles, while giving the pin most sour looks.

Hisvet handed it to Foursie, who bore it somewhat gingerly across the room to a drawered chest topped with cosmetics and mirrors, and inserted it into a spherical black cushion that held jewel-headed others such, compassing all the hues of the rainbow.

Meanwhile Hisvet addressed Threesie, whose eyes widened as she listened. “During my talk I twice got the distinct impression that we were being spied on by an evil intelligence, one of the criminous sort my father deals with, or one of our own enemies or a cast-off lover perchance.” She searched her gaze around the walls, lingering somewhat overlong, the Mouser felt, in his direction.

“I will meditate on it,” she continued. “Dear Threesie, fetch me my silver-inlaid black opal figure of the world of Nehwon which I call the Opener of the Way."

Threesie nodded dutifully and went to the same chest Foursie had just visited, passing her midway.

“Dear Foursie,” Hisvet greeted the blonde, “fetch me a beaker of white wine. My throat has grown quite dry with all that stupid talking."

Foursie bowed her fair-thatched head and came to the low table set against the wall behind which the Mouser was embedded in earth invisible to him. He studied her appreciatively as she unstoppered the carafe he'd so disastrously snatched at and neatly filled a shining glass so tall and narrow it looked like a measuring tube. Her white uniform tunic was secured down the front with large circular jet buttons.

Returning to her mistress, she went down on her knees without bending her slender body in any other way and proffered the refreshment.

“Taste it first,” Hisvet instructed.

Getting this instruction, not uncommonly given servants by aristocrats, Foursie threw back her head and poured a short gush of the fluid between her parted lips without touching them to the glass, which she next held out to show its level was perceptibly decreased.

Hisvet accepted it, saying, “That was well executed, Foursie. Next time don't wait for instruction. And you might lick your lips and smile to show that you enjoyed."

Foursie bobbed her head.

“Dear demoiselle,” Threesie called from where she knelt at the chest of drawers, “I cannot find the Opener."

“Have you searched carefully for it?” Hisvet called back, her voice becoming slightly thin. “It is an oblate sphere big as two thumbs, inset with silver bounding the continents and flat diamonds for the cities and a larger amethyst and turquoise making the death and life poles."

“Dear demoiselle, I know the Opener,” Threesie called respectfully.

Hisvet, who was looking at Foursie again, shrugged her shoulders, then set the narrow glass to her lips and downed its contents in three swallows. “That was refreshing.” Again the lip pats.

A rutching sound turned her attention back to Threesie. “No, do not open the other drawers,” she directed. “It would not be there. Just search the top one thoroughly and find it. Set out the contents one by one on top of the chest if necessary."

“Yes, demoiselle."

Hisvet caught Foursie's eye again, rolled hers toward busy Threesie, sketched another shrug, and commented confidingly, “This could become a tiresome annoyance, you know, a true weariness. No, girl, don't bob your head. That's all right on Threesie, but it's not your style. Incline it once, demurely."

“Yes, mistress.” Her single nod was shy as a virgin princess's.

“How are you doing, Threesie?"

The brunette turned to face them. Her reply was barely loud enough to cross the room. “Demoiselle, I must confess myself defeated."

After a rather long pause, Hisvet said reflectively, “That could be quite bothersome for you, Threesie, you know. As senior maid present, you would be wholly responsible for any deficiencies, disappearances, or thefts. Think about it."

After another pause, she sighed and said, holding out the empty glass, “Foursie, fetch me the springy implement of correction."

The blonde inclined her head, took the glass, and walking somewhat more slowly, returned to the low table, set down the glass, refilled it, and reached across to seize the magically suspended white whip, which she lifted with a little twist and bore off with the glass, thereby solving a minor mystery for the Mouser. The whip had simply been hanging on a hook on the wall. But since the wall had been and was again invisible to him, so was the hook protruding from it.

He felt a stirring of interest in the scene he spied on from his confining point of vantage, and was duly grateful to have his mind taken a little off his own troubles. He knew something of Hisvet's ways and could guess the next developments, or at least speculate rewardingly. Dark-haired Threesie seemed well cast as the villain or culprit of this triangular piece. Leaning back against the chest of drawers and scowling, she looked a bird of ill omen in her uniform black tunic, though the large circular alabaster buttons going down the front added a comic note. Foursie did her kneeling trick a second time. Hisvet accepted the whip and replenished drink, saying graciously, “Thank you, my dear. I feel much better with these both by me. Well, Threesie?"

“I am thinking, demoiselle,” that one said, “and it comes to me that when I entered this room Foursie was crouched where I stand now with the drawer open I have just searched thoroughly, and she was rummaging around in it. She pushed it shut at once, but may well have taken somewhat from it, I realize now, and hid about her person."

“Demoiselle, that's not true!” Foursie protested, turning pale. “The drawer was never open, nor I at it."

“She is a vicious little liar, dear mistress,” Threesie shot back. “Mark how she blanches!"

“Hush, girls,” Hisvet reproved. “I have thought of a simple way to settle this most unseemly dispute. Threesie dear, had Foursie opportunity to hide the Opener elsewhere in the room after she took it, if she did? As I recall, I entered shortly after you did."

“No, mistress, she had not."

“Well, then.” Hisvet said, smiling. “Threesie, come here. Foursie dear, strip off your tunic, so she may search you thoroughly."

“Demoiselle!” the blonde uttered reproachfully. “You would not shame me so."

“No shame at all,” Hisvet assured her ingenuously, lifting her silver eyebrows. “Why, child, suppose I were entertaining a lover, I might very well—probably would—have you and Threesie disrobe, so as not to embarrass him, or at all events make us both feel conspicuous. Or we might have the whim to ask one of you or both to join in our play under direction. Frix understood these things, as I hope Threesie does. Frix was incomparable. Not even Twosie comes close to matching her. But as you know, Frix managed to work out her term of service, discharge the geas my father set upon her. There's never been another Onesie, and that's why."

Both maids nodded agreement, though somewhat grimly in their two different styles. They'd each heard somewhat too much about the Incomparable Onesie.

The Mouser was beginning to enjoy himself. Why, look, the piece was barely begun and Hisvet had managed to switch around the roles of the two other characters! He wished Fafhrd were here, he'd enjoy hearing Frix praised so. He'd been quite gone on the princess of Arilia, especially when she'd been Hisvet's imperturbable slave-maid. Though the large loon wouldn't appreciate being entombed, that was certain. Probably too big to survive by scavenging air in any case. Which reminded him, he'd best keep in mind his own breathing. And not lose sight of the ever-present possibility of the intrusion into the scene of some third force from either the under- or overworld. Talk about having to watch two ways!

In response to Hisvet's, “And so, no nonsense, child. Strip, I said!” Foursie had been arguing, “Have compassion, demoiselle. To disrobe for a lover would be one thing. But to strip to be searched by a fellow servant is simply too humiliating. I couldn't bear it!"

Hisvet sprang up off the bed. “I've quite lost patience with you, you prudish little bitch. Who are you to say what you'll bear—or bare, for that matter? Threesie, grip her arms! If she struggles, pinion them behind her."

The dark maid, who was already back of Foursie, seized and tightly held her elbows down at her sides, meanwhile smiling somewhat evilly at her mistress across the fair maid's shoulder. Hisvet reached out a straight right arm, chucked the girl's chin up until they were looking each other straight in the eye, and then proceeded very deliberately to unbutton the top black button.

Foursie said, with as much dignity as she could muster, “I would have submitted to you, demoiselle, without my arms held."

But Hisvet said only, very deliberately also, “You are a silly schoolgirl, Foursie dear, needing considerable teaching, which you're going to get. You would submit to me? But not to my maid acting on my orders? To begin with, Threesie is not your equal fellow servant. She outranks you and is empowered to correct you in my absence."

As she spoke she went on undoing the buttons, taking her time and digging her knuckles and pressing the large buttons into the girl's flesh edgewise as she did so. At the undoing of the third button the maid's small, firm, pink-nippled breasts popped out. Hisvet continued, “But as it is, you're getting your way, aren't you, Foursie? I am disrobing you and not dear Threesie here, though she is witnessing. In fact, I'm ‘maiding’ you, how's that for topsy-turvy? You're getting the deluxe treatment, one might say, though I strongly doubt you will get much pleasure from it."

She finished with the buttons, looked the girl up and down, lightly flicked her breasts with the back of her hand, and said with a cheery laugh, “There, that wasn't so bad now, was it, dear? Threesie, finish."

Grinning, the dark maid slid the white tunic down Foursie's arms and off them.

“Why, you are blushing, Foursie,” Hisvet observed, chuckling. “On Whore Street that's a specialty, I'm told, and ups the price. Inspect the garment carefully,” she warned Threesie. “Feel along each seam and hem. She may have pilfered something smaller than the Opener. And now, dear child, prepare yourself to be searched from head to toe by a maid who is your superior, whilst I direct and witness.” Taking up the silver-handled whip of white snow-serpent hide from the bed and gesturing with it, she directed Foursie, “Lift out your arms a little from your sides. There, that's enough. And stand so that your entire anatomy is more accessible. A little wider stance, please. Yes, that will do."

The Mouser noted that all the maid's body hair had been shaven or plucked. So that practice, favored by witless Glipkerio, the Scarecrow Overlord, was still followed in Lankhmar. A seemly and most attractive one, the Mouser thought.

“There's nothing hidden in the garment, Threesie? You're sure? Well, toss it by the far wall and then you might begin by running your fingers through Foursie's hair. Bend forward, child! Slowly and carefully, Threesie. I know her mop's quite short, but you'd be shocked to learn how much a little hair can sometimes hide. And don't forget the ears. We're looking for tiny things."

Hisvet yawned and took a long swallow of wine. Foursie glared at her nearer tormentor. There is something peculiarly degrading about being handled by the ears, having them spread and bent this way and that. But Threesie, learning from her mistress, only smiled sweetly back.

“And now the mouth,” Hisvet directed. “Open wide, Foursie, as for the barber-surgeon. Feel in each cheek, Threesie. I don't suppose Foursie's been playing the little squirrel, but there's no telling. And now ... Surely you're not at a loss, Threesie? Perhaps I should have expressed it, search her from top to bottom. You may lubricate your fingers with my pomade. But use it sparingly, its basis is the essential oil with which they anoint the Emperor of the East. Don't agonize so, Foursie! Imagine it's your lover exploring you, dexterously demonstrating his tender regard. Who is your lover, Foursie? You do have one, I trust? Come to recall, I've caught the fair page Han looking at you in that certain way. I wonder what he'd think if he could see you as you're presently occupied. Droll. I've half a mind to summon him. Well, that's half done. And now, Threesie, her darker avenue of amatory bliss. Bend over, Foursie. Treat her gently, Threesie. Some of these matters appear to be quite new to our little girl, advanced subjects for our student, though I know that's hard to credit. What Foursie, tears? Cheer up, child! You're not proved guilty yet, in fact you're well on the way to being cleared. Life has all sorts of surprises."

The Mouser smiled cynically from his weird invisible prison. Around Hisvet surprises were invariably disastrous, he knew from experience. He was thoroughly enjoying himself, so far as his limited circumstances permitted. He thought of how all of his greatest loves and infatuations had been for short and slim girls like these. Lilyblack came to mind, back when he'd bravoed and racketeered for Pulg and Fafhrd had found god in Issek. Reetha, who'd been Glipkerio's silver-chained maid. Ivivis of Quarmall, supple as a snake. Innocent, tragic Ivrian, his first love, whose princess-dreams he'd fed. Cif, of course. The night-filly Ivmiss Ovartamortes. That made seven, counting Hisvet. And there was one other, an eighth, whose name and identity evaded him, who was also a maid by profession and particularly delectable because somehow forbidden. Who had she been? What was her name? If he could recall one more detail he'd remember all. Maddening! Of course, he'd had all manner of larger women, but this elusive memory involved all smaller than himself, his special pantheon of little darlings. You'd think a man in his grave (and that was truly his situation, face it) would be able to concentrate his mind upon one subject, but no, even here there were details to distract you, self-responsibilities that had to be taken care of, as keeping up an even rhythm of shallow breathing, pushing back intrusive dirt off of his lips, keeping constant watch before and behind—it occurred to him that Foursie too must be telling herself that last thing, though much good it would do her—which reminded him to return to the enjoyment of the three-girl comedy which destiny had provided for his secret viewing.

Hisvet was saying, “Now, Foursie, go to the far wall and stand facing it while I hear Threesie's report and confer with her. And stop blubbering, girl! Use your discarded tunic to wipe the tears and snot off your face."

Hisvet led Threesie back to the foot of the bed, set her empty glass on the low table, and said in a voice that Mouser could barely hear, despite the advantages of nearness and occult audition, “I take it, Threesie, you didn't find the Opener or anything else?"

“No, dear demoiselle, I did not,” the dark maid replied, and then went on in a voice that was more like a stage whisper, “I'm certain she's swallowed it. I suggest she be given a strong emetic, and if that fails, a powerful cathartic. Or both together, to save time."

Foursie too heard that, the Mouser judged by the way her shoulders drew together as she faced the wall.

Hisvet shook her head and said in the same low tones as before, “No, that won't be necessary, I think, though it could be amusing under other circumstances. Now it suits my design to have her think she's been completely cleared of any suspicion of theft.” She faced around and changed to her most ringing silver voice, “Congratulations, Foursie, you'll be glad to hear that your fellow maid has given you a clean bill of health. Isn't that wonderful? And now come here at once. No, don't try to put on your tunic. Leave that soiled rag. You need a lot more practice in serving naked, which you ought to be able to do every bit as efficiently, coolly, and nicely without the reassurance of a frock. And perhaps practice in other activities one generally carries out best in one's skin. Beginning now."

The Lankhmar demoiselle in the violet wrap yawned again and stretched. “That wretched session has quite wearied me. Foursie, you may begin your nude reapprenticeship (that's a joke, girl) by fetching me a fat pillow from the head of the bed."

When Foursie came around with her plump lemon-hued burden, her eyes asking a question, Hisvet indicated with her whip the bottom corner of the bed, and when the fair maid had placed the pillow there, gave her the whip, saying, “Hold this for me,” and stretched herself out with her head on the pillow. But after murmuring, “Ah, that's better,” and wriggling her toes, she lifted up on an elbow, looked toward Threesie, and pointed with her other hand down at the carpet by the foot of the bed, saying, “Threesie, come here. I want to show you something privately."

When the dark maid came eagerly, all agog for more secrets, Hisvet laid her silver-tressed head back again upon the pillow, whose hue contrasted nicely with her violet wrap, and said, “Lean down, so your head is close to mine. I want this to be quite private. Foursie, stand clear."

But when Threesie stooped down, her lips working with high excitement, Hisvet began at once to criticize. “No, don't bend your knees! I did not bid you crouch over me like an animal. Keep your legs straight."

By bending her waist more, pushing her buttocks back, and also throwing her arms out behind her, the dark maid managed to comply with her instructions without overbalancing. Her and her mistress's faces were upside down to each other.

“But, demoiselle,” Threesie pointed out humbly, “when I bend over like this in this short tunic, I expose myself behind. Especially with your rule against undergarments."

Hisvet smiled up at her. “That's very true,” she observed, “and I designed them partly with that in mind, so that when told to pick up something from the floor, for instance, a maid would stoop gracefully, as in a curtsey, keeping her head and shoulders erect. It's far more seemly and civilized."

Threesie said uncertainly, “But when you go down like that you have to bend your knees, you squat. You told me not to bend—"

“That's quite a different matter,” Hisvet interrupted, impatience gathering in her voice. “I told you to lean down your head."

“But, demoiselle—” Threesie faltered.

Hisvet reached up and caught an earlobe between forefinger and thumb, dug in the nails, twisted sharply and gave a downward tug. Threesie squealed. Hisvet let go and, patting her cheek, told her, “That's all right. I just wanted to rivet your attention and make you stop your silly babble. Now, listen carefully. While you did the body search on Foursie passably well, it became frightfully obvious that you, as well as Foursie, needless to say, were in sore need of instruction in the amatory arts, which it falls on me to give you, since you're my own dear maid and no one else's.” And reaching her hand higher, she hooked her fingers around the back of Threesie's neck and pulled her head down briskly but thoughtfully, leaning her own head to the left at the last moment, so that her lips met at an angle those of Threesie, who managed to keep her balance by further and somewhat desperate rearward outthrustings.

The Mouser thought, I knew that this was coming. But one certainly cannot fault the little darlings for their occasional itch for each other, since their taste is so exactly like my own. Strange, come to think of it, that Fafhrd and I have never seemed to experience this like-sex urge. Is it a deficiency in us? I must discuss the question with him some time. And with Cif too, for that matter, ask her if she and Afreyt ever played games ... no, maybe not ask, I could understand Afreyt lusting for Cif, but not dear Ciffy for that beanpole Venus.

Hisvet shifted her fingers behind Threesie's head to the short hairs there, lifted her head to its original position as briskly as she'd lowered it, and said, “That was passable also. Next time, if such should be, employ your tongue somewhat more freely. Be adventurous, girl."

Wide-eyed Threesie gasped, “Excuse me, demoiselle, but was that kiss, for which I thank you most humbly, the something you said you wished to show me privately?"

“No, it was not,” Hisvet informed her, thrusting a hand deep into a side pocket of her wrap. “That is a different matter, rather sadder for you.” Pulling Threesie's head down again, this time by the neck of her black tunic, she brought a fist out of the pocket, opened it under Threesie's eyes, displaying on her cupped palm a globular black opal traveled with silver lines and pocked here and there with small, pale, glittering dots. “What do you suppose this is?” she asked.

“It appears to be the Opener of the Way, dear demoiselle.” Threesie faltered. “But how—"

“Quite right, girl. I took it earlier from the chest myself and just now remembered. So Foursie could hardly have swallowed it, could she? Or even taken it from the chest, for that matter."

“No, demoiselle,” the dark maid agreed reluctantly. “But Foursie's only a servant of the lowest rank, little better than a slave. It was natural to suspect her. Moreover, you yourself must have known—"

“I told you I only now remembered!” Hisvet reminded her in dangerous tones. She raised her voice. “Foursie!"

“Yes, demoiselle?” came the swift reply.

“Threesie is to be punished for bearing false witness against a fellow servant. Since you're the party who would have been injured, I think it's most appropriate that you administer the chastisement. Moreover, you are conveniently at hand and have my whip. Do you know how to use it?"

“I think I do, demoiselle,” Foursie answered evenly. “When I was a child down on the farm I used to ride a mule."

“That's nice to know,” Hisvet called. “Wait for directions."

As Threesie quite involuntarily started to move away, Hisvet rotated the fist grasping her tunic so that it tightened around Threesie's neck and Hisvet's knuckles dug into the maid's throat.

“Listen,” she hissed, “if you so much as move a step or flex your knees during what's coming, I'll have my father put a geas on you. And not a relatively nice and easy one like Frix. She merely had to serve me faithfully and cheerfully as slave until she'd thrice saved my life at risk of her own. Straighten those knees now!"

Threesie complied. She had seen old Hisvin send a berserk cook into mortal convulsions, so he died in his tracks with mouth exuding greenish foam, merely by staring at him fixedly.

Hisvet eased her grip on the top of Threesie's tunic. She scowled in thought. Then her face broke into a smile. She called, “Foursie, here's how. Time your blows to the splashes of the waterclock, one for one, nothing in between—don't let yourself get carried away. Start with the third plash after the next. I'll call the first of those so you get it right."

Hisvet's hand on the neck of the black tunic became busy, undoing the three top big white buttons rapidly.

The waterclock plashed, sounding unnaturally loud. Hisvet called, “Ready!” Tension took hold.

Though pendant, the dark maid's breasts were quite as small and firm as the fair one's, with thicker nipples the rosy hue of fresh scrubbed copper. Hisvet fondled them.

“How many blows, demoiselle?” Threesie asked in a small, fearfully anxious voice. “In all?"

“Hush! I haven't decided yet. You're supposed to be enjoying this. And you really are, I can tell, for your nipples are hardening despite your terrors. And your aureoles are all goose bumps. You should indicate pleasure at my squeezings and finger-dancing across your tits by sighing and moaning."

The waterclock plashed. “One!” Hisvet called, then ominously for Threesie's benefit, “You've started to bend your legs again,” and taking the hand away from the maid's bosom, reached out and gave each of her knees a firm shove.

In his retreat the Mouser spared a glance for the ripples spreading and reflecting in the clock's pool. A shiver of genuine fear surprised him at the thought that he seemed to be just too well placed for watching for it all to be a matter of chance. Had Hisvet arranged it so? Did she somehow know that he, or at least some spirit, was watching invisibly? Was it all to get him off guard?

No, he told himself, I'm starting to think too tricky. This was just one of those glorious guilty visions that, it was to be hoped, lightened the last moments of buried men less fortunate or resourceful than he. His eyes feasted on Foursie as the girl positioned herself to the far side of Threesie's quivering rear, measuring distances with her eyes and the white whip, her pink-nippled breasts jouncing a bit as she danced with excitement. She was flushed all over, and not with embarassment, he was sure.

Plash went the waterclock. “Two!” Hisvet called. She shifted her hand to the back of Threesie's neck, pulled down until the maid's blanched tight face was a hand's breadth above her own, said rapidly, “We're doing another kiss. It'll help you bear the pain and I want to feel you getting it, taste your reaction. Keep your knees straight,” and she pulled the maid's face down all the way and kissed her fiercely. Her free hand played with Threesie's maiden breasts.

The third plash was tailed with a narrow thwack and muffled squeal. Threesie bucked. And all for me, the little darlings, Mouser thought. Foursie's blue eyes flashed like a fury's in ecstasy. She was breathing hard. She drew back the white whip to begin another blow, remembered in time to wait.

Hisvet let up Threesie's head to breathe. “Lovely,” she told her. “Your scream came down my throat. It tasted like divine spice.” Then, “Excellent, Foursie,” she called. “Stay on your toes, girl."

Threesie cried, “Hesset help me,” invoking the Lankhmar moon goddess. “Make her stop, demoiselle, I'll do anything."

Hisvet said, “Hush, girl. Hesset give you courage,” and pulled down her head again, stifling her cries against her waiting lips. Her other hand pressed back on the maid's knees.

The three sounds were much the same. Threesie's buck was more of a caper. The Mouser was surprised by his arousal, felt a flicker of shame, recalled in time to breathe shallowly, et cetera.

The moment Hisvet let up Threesie's head to take a breath, the maid pleaded, “Make her stop, she'll kill me,” then couldn't contain indignation. “Demoiselle, you knew she hadn't stolen the jewel. You led me on."

Hisvet's hand, busy with her breasts, seized up flesh and skin midway between them as though her thumb and forefinger knuckle were pinchers, squeezed, twisted, rubbed together, and jerked down all at once. Threesie squealed. “Silence, you stupid slut,” her mistress hissed. “You enjoyed making her suffer, now you're paying. You little fool! Don't you realize a maid who falsely betrays her fellow maid would just as readily betray her mistress? I expect real loyalty from my maids. Foursie, lay on hard.” And she pulled the maid's face against hers just as the drop plashed and the third blow fell. This time when Hisvet released her head, there were no instant words, tears spurted down instead. Hisvet shook them off, dipped her free hand again in her wide pocket.

And this time the Mouser was surprised by his impulse to shut his eyes. But nasty fascination and the urgent messages from his stiffening member were too strong.

Hisvet lectured, “One other thing I expect of my maid: love, when the whim is on me. That's the chief reason she must always keep herself clean and attractive.” She mopped Threesie's face with a large kerchief, then held it to her nose. “Blow,” she commanded. “And then swallow hard. I don't want you blubbering snot on me."

Threesie obeyed, but then the injustice of it all overwhelmed her. “But it isn't fair,” she bleated woefully. “It's not fair at all."

Those words and tones had a strange and unexpected effect upon the earth-embraced Mouser. They recalled to him the name that had eluded him of the eighth little darling. A score and two or three years slipped away and he was lolling dishabille on the wide couch in the private dining chamber of the Silver Eel tavern in Lankhmar, and Ivlis's maid Freg was pacing back and forth before him in her delicious young slim nakedness, and then she had stopped by him and turned toward him, tears spurting from her eyes, and bleated woefully those identical same trite words.

He knew the circumstances all right, knew them by heart.

Barely a fortnight had passed since the fairly satisfactory ending of the affair of Omphal's jewel-crusted skull and other vengeful brown bones from the forgotten burial crypt in the great house of the Thieves Guild. The gems salvaged had been adequate, especially when there was added thereto the person of Ivlis, a lean, shifty, fox-faced glorious redhead. He'd had her the second night after, though that hadn't been easy, and it was more or less understood between Fafhrd and him that Freg was the Northerner's booty. But then the big oaf had delayed making his move, dawdled over nailing down his conquest, seemed hardly grateful at all to the Mouser for having taken on the more difficult seduction, leaving his comrade the juicier, tenderer prey, to be had for no more exertion than pushing back onto the bed (nine times out of ten the big man was incomprehensibly slower than he about such matters), so that after two or three more nights and nothing more forward, and feeling impatient and feckless and at war with all Nehwon—and with Fafhrd too, for the nonce—and opportunity presenting, he'd yielded to temptation and bedded the silly chit, which hadn't been all that easy either. And then on their third or fourth assignation she turned stormy and accused him of getting her drunk and forcing her the first time and claimed to have been deeply in love with Fafhrd and he with her, she knew, only they'd been moving slowly so as to savor fully their romance before declaring and enjoying it, and the Mouser had cut in with his nasty lust and wily ways and managed to root a child in her, she was certain of that, and so spoiled everything. And although he was still deeply infatuated with Freg, that had angered him and he'd told the little fool that he always tried out the virtue of girls who set their cap for Fafhrd and tried to romance him, to see if they were worthy of him and would stay faithful, and none of them had passed the test so far, but she'd done worst. And she had spouted tears and whimpered those nine words Threesie'd just voiced. And the next day Freg had been gone from Lankhmar, no one knew where, and Fafhrd had fallen into a melancholy fit, and Ivlis'd turned nasty, and he'd not breathed a word then or ever about the part he'd played.

All of which went to show, he told himself, how a suddenly triggered lost memory, like a ghost from the grave, could be so real as to blot out completely a poignantly interesting, nastily fascinating present, almost create another present, as it were, for several heartbeats till it had run its course inside his eyes.

They were between blows in Hisvet's boudoir. The violet wrap was undone just far enough to bare her own top pair of small, palely violet-nippled breasts, and she was holding down to them the tousled head of the dark maid, who was tonguing them industriously under instructions. She broke these off to carol, “To force the unwilling to accept joy is so rewarding! To cause the recalcitrant to discover pleasure in pain is even more so!” The fair maid was doing a rapid little dance in place to contain her pent excitement and rotating the poised white whip in a little circle in time with her flashing toes. Hisvet called gayly to incite her on, “Remember, Foursie, the slut had her fingers up you prying around, not gently, I'll warrant,” and the clock plashed and the whip whistled and thwacked and Threesie joined in the dance.

When Hisvet let up her head, the dark maid said rapidly, “If you'll have her stop just for a while, demoiselle, I'll lick your ass most lovingly, I promise,” and Hisvet replied, “All in good time, girl,” and reaching back in an excess of arousal, caught hold with thumb and forefinger knuckle of her by the midst of her maiden mound and gave it the same sort of pincher's tweak as she had the maid's flesh midway between her breasts, where a blue bruise now showed; and the dark maid squealed muffledly.

But then, just as Foursie stayed her dance to strike and the Mouser's erection grew almost unbearably hard, Hisvet cried sharply, “Break off the whipping, Foursie! Don't strike again!” and the maid obeyed with a spasmodic effort, and Hisvet ducked her head and shoulders out from under Threesie's arched front and stared searchingly at the wall by the waterclock just where the whip had hung, her nostrils flaring and with blue-and-pink-mottled tongue showing in her open mouth. She announced raptly and anxious, “I sense the near presence of Death or a close relative, some murderous demon lord or deadly demoness. It must have scented your ecstasy of torment, Threesie, and come hunting."

The Mouser felt they were all staring straight at him, then noted that their gazes went in slightly different directions: Hisvet's intense but cool; Foursie's shocked and terrified as she backed away, dropping the pristine white whip; Threesie's somewhat not yet grasping her good fortune, as she stood in bent position in her sagging and worked-up black tunic stretched back toward her rear, crisscrossed with red welts, and with her knees still straight.

Hisvet continued, “Run, Foursie, and warn my father of this menace. Bid him haste here, bringing his wand and sigils. Nay, do not stay to dress or hunt a towel, as if you were a simpering virgin. Go as you are. And speed! There's danger here, you witlet!"

Then, turning her furious attention to Threesie, “Quit standing there so docilely bent over with legs invitingly spread, lamebrain, all ready for the slavering hounds of death to mount you. Spring to and defend my rear, mind cripple!"

Just then the Mouser felt what seemed a large centipede crawl across his left thigh, somehow insinuating itself between his flesh and the grainy earth encasing him, and then march down his rigid, like-embedded cock, and settle itself in a ring round his tumescent glans. And there swung in round his head from the other side, moving through the earth effortlessly, a face like a beautiful skull tightly covered by blue-pied, chalky white skin with eyes that were intent red embers, and pressed itself against his own face closely from forehead to chin, so he felt through her blue lips mashing his her individual two ranks of teeth. He realized that the centipede was the bone tips of her skeletal hand (the other pressed the back of his neck at the base of his own skull) and whose bony fingertips now moved slightly upon his stiff member, inducing it to spend one drop, but one drop only, of its load, giving him a sickening, joyless jolt of heavy black pain that left him weak and gasping. But no sooner had that pain begun to fade down when the slim bone fingers moved and the second jolt came equal to the first, and after agonizing pauses the third and fourth.

The stangury! The worst pain that a man can suffer, he'd once heard, when urine must be voided drop by drop—this was the same, except it was his seed.

And it kept on.

His wavering mind confused it with the plashes of the water-clock. But Threesie had suffered only eight or nine stripes at most. How many drops would it take to discharge his heavy load? And render his member flaccid? Two score hundred?

The violet-hung boudoir and Hisvet and her crew were gone. All that remained for vision was the vermilion volume lit by pain's hot ember eyes and his phosphorescent mask, hell in a very small place.

In a voice that was rough, rasping, infinitely dry, sardonic-tender, Death's sister whispered throatily, “My very own dear love. My dearest one."

As his torment continued, his wavering consciousness and gasping and trembling general weakness warned him the end was near. Despite the continuing jolts of agony, he concentrated on regulating his breathing, making it shallow, pushing back with his tongue the grains his gasps had drawn. With the roaring in his ears, it became a surf of boulders he had to keep at bay.

Cif was cheered to find things orderly busy at the diggings, the dogcart unloading, some men wolfing midday bread and soup by the fire, while at the shaft head the stubby wide cone of dug dirt had grown visibly higher and the bright growl of a saw spoke of shorings and roofing for the tunnel being readied. Fafhrd's man Fren, on duty at the windlass, told her that Skor, the girl Klute, and Mikkidu were down, the first two working at the face, that last walking dirt between there and the shaft. She commented on a faint stench, coming irregularly.

“I whiffed something myself once or twice already,” Fren agreed, making a face. “Like rotten eggs?"

At his offer, she rode the empty bucket down, standing, her small-booted feet fitting with room to spare.

At the shaft the foul odor became stronger. Looking up at Rill and Skullick, she held her nose. They copied her gesture, nodding. As she neared the bottom, Mikkidu came backing out of the tunnel's low entry lugging a full bucket and she stepped out away from him, preparatory to helping switch the hook from the empty bucket to the full one.

But as he swung it around, he pitched over it into her arms. Digging in her heels, she managed to prop the Mouser's small lieutenant, snarling at him, “What's the matter with you, Mik? Are you drunk?"

When he answered her groggily, “No, Lady,” his eyes weaving, she pushed him against the wall, leaving him to recover his wits and balance, and hurried into the tunnel.

Here the stink was intense and she held her breath. A few fast scurrying steps brought her to the end, where the light of a leviathan-oil lamp burning blue and dim showed her Skor on his knees slumped forward against the rough face he'd been scraping, his shoulders slack, while beside him Klute lay prone on the rock floor, evidently having passed out as she'd tried to crawl away.

Cif took her under the armpits and half dragged, half carried her out of the tunnel. Mikkidu was rubbing his forehead. She called, “Skullick!” but he was already climbing down by the pegs. Klute was writhing a little and mewling faintly with her eyes closed. Cif slung her over an arm, stepped into the empty bucket, and signaled Fren to hoist. The pulleys creaked. In passing she told Skullick, “Skor's collapsed at the face. Fumes and foul air, get him out fast."

At the top she passed Klute to Rill and Fren and then stepped out herself. The girl was muttering, “Can't find my scoop.” Rill told her, “Wake up, Klute. Try to breathe deeply,” and remarked to Cif, “There was such a stench in the cave toward Darkfire."

Cif nodded and turned back to watch Skullick drag Skor out of the tunnel. He called, “He'll come out of it, Lady. His pulse is still there.” Mikkidu seemed recovered, for he helped Skullick get a rope around the unconscious man's chest so he could be hoisted up the shaft, and then climbed the pegs alongside to steady the dead-weight burden on its way.

When Fafhrd's lieutenant was stretched out next to the shaft head, Cif took his pulse under the jaw, didn't like its reedy feel, and directed Mikkidu to lift his shoulders and head (by its scanty red hair) while she straddled his lap, clasped him around with both arms, and fed him air from her own lips, alternating with brief tightenings of her hug.

When Skor's pulse seemed stronger, she directed he be carried to the shelter tent and delegated Rill to keep close watch and continue her nursing as needed. Then she quizzed Mikkidu sharply.

“You were going into and out of the tunnel, you must have noticed the fumes."

“I did, Lady,” he replied, “and warned Skor. But he made light of them, being so concentrated on speeding the digging."

“Well, he was right about that, though imprudent,” she said with weight. “The digging must continue at the face if we're to have a chance of saving the Captain. Fresh air must be conveyed there in good supply. And speedily."

“Aye, Lady,” Mikkidu agreed dubiously, “but how?"

“I have had opportunity to think that matter through,” she told him. “Mik, last autumn you were with the captains on their great snow-serpent hunt in the Death Lands that lie midway betwixt the volcanoes Darkfire and Hellglow?"

“Who of us wasn't, Lady?” that one replied. “Aye, and busy for a fussy fortnight afterward flaying and curing the uncut hides."

“As I recall,” she went on, “there were some forty perfect hides got in all."

“Two score and seven to be precise, Lady. All laid up at the barracks with camphor and cloves against the next trading voyage by one of the captains. They'd bring a fortune in Lankhmar."

“As I too thought.” She nodded. “The dogcart is still here. I've a mind to send you back in it to fetch out those same hides. All of them."

He stared at her puzzledly.

“Are you aware,” she asked him, “that each of those hides constitutes a wrist-wide, sound leather tube nine or ten cubits long? Three or four yards?"

“Yes, Lady,” he began, his brow still clouded, “but—"

“Come on, I'll go with you,” she said with a merry grin, standing up from where they'd been sitting beside the fire. “For you'll need someone to attend to the hides while you're busy seeing to the unshipping of the great bellows at the smith-forge preparatory to its conveyance here."

“Lady,” Mikkidu said, his face lightening up, “I do believe I get a glimmering of your intention."

“And so do I!” was voiced admiringly by Skullick, who'd been listening in.

“Good!” Cif told the latter. “Then you can take charge here whilst I'm away."

And she dragged Fafhrd's ring off her thumb and gave it to Skullick.

Pshawri broke a pane of ice to free the waters of Last Spring for easy imbibing.

When he had lapped his fill he backed away, dancing his thanks in a solemn little jig such as no one had ever seen him foot. He was a secretive young man.

He ended his jig with a slow rotation widdershins, scanning his still, chill, hazy-white surroundings from right to left. Darkfire's smoke plume was a smudge in the northern milk-sky. His gaze lingered studiously on the southwest and south, as though he expected pursuers there, and from the height to which he roved it, either flying ones or else very big and tall indeed.

He was at the boundary between the Moor and barren Lava Lands, though a dusting of snow hid the blackness of the latter, blurring the distinction.

He undid one button of his pouch hanging against his belly in front and carefully wormed out the bottle Afreyt had given him, mindful of the pouch's precious contents, and drank off half the remnant of fortified sweet wine, toasting the smoke plume. Then he bore the bottle back to the spring, submerged it until it was almost full, recorked it and returned it to his pouch. After rebuttoning the latter, he felt it over with a gesture curiously reminiscent of a pregnant woman feeling for movement.

He sketched a second jig that included a stamping defiance toward the south-southwest, then turned and loped away north.

Toward evening the girl Fingers woke refreshed in the bed at Cif's house she'd occupied night before last. She slid herself from under the blanket without waking Gale, slipped into one of the two robes of toweling lying across the foot, belted it, and wandered down to the large kitchen, where Afreyt, similarly clad, stood beside a narrow door of gray driftwood with a row of pegs and two small windows of horn in the wall alongside it. The pegs were empty save for two, whence hung a worn robe larger than her own and an iron-studded belt bearing sheathed dirk and small-ax, with boots set below.

“I bathe in steam,” the tall lady said. “Will you join me?"

“Gratefully, Lady,” the girl replied. “You heap me with kindnesses I can never repay."

“My privilege,” Afreyt replied. “In return you might tell me of Ilthmar and Tovilyis, where I've never been.” Her violet eyes twinkled. “And scrub my back.” She hung her robe, Fingers copying her, on an empty peg and led the way into a narrow chamber consisting of four wide driftwood steps and dimly lit by four small windows, and shut the door behind them. Beside it were a longhandled dipper and two buckets, the farther one filled with water, the near with round stones glowing dark red toward their center and toasting Fingers's calves and knees as she passed close to them. Afreyt poured two-and-a-half dippers of water into the hot rocks. There was an explosive sizzling and clouds of steam enveloped them. Afreyt seated herself on the third step, Fingers following suit, and noting or divining the girl's looks of surprise and mild alarm at the increase in the moist heat, remarked, “It teases the heart a little, does it not? Do not fear to inhale deeply. Move down a step if it's uncomfortable,” she advised.

“It does indeed, Lady,” Fingers agreed, but held her level.

“Now tell me of foul filthy Ilthmar and its nasty rat god,” Afreyt suggested. “In what figure is he shown or depicted?"

“In that of a man, Lady, with a rat's head and long tail. On ritual occasions his human priests wear a rat mask, carry a long snaky whip resembling a giant rat's tail, and go naked or robed according to the nature of the rite."

“How is the relationship between humanity and the ratty kind rationalized?” Afreyt inquired.

“In olden times, when rats had their cities aboveground, they warred with and enslaved a race of giants. Ourselves, Lady, humankind. Then in the course of numerous revolts and repressions, the rats transferred their cities underground for privacy and to give them peace and quiet to perfect their culture, but maintaining secret dominion over their servant-slaves.” The girl's voice was thoughtful. Her left hand played with a ridgy white seashell embedded in the gray plank on which their sweat dripped. Beside it was a boreworm hole, into which she ran her little finger back and forth. It fitted nicely. She continued, “There's a dark magic known only to the doubly initiated (which mother and I were not) whereby rats and their allies may switch size back and forth between rat and human. The rats’ prophets and chiefest allies amongst humankind are numbered among their saints, of whom the recentest to be canonized are St. Hisvin of Lankhmar and his daughter, St. Hisvet, Lankhmar Below being the chiefest city of the rats, although, unlike Ilthmar, the worship of the rat god is forbidden in Lankhmar Above."

Afreyt handed Fingers a stiff-bristled brush and presented her back, on which the girl, kneeling, got to work industriously. The tall woman asked, “Have you seen representations in Ilthmar of this female saint?"

“Aye, Lady, there's a carving at her small shrine in the Rat's dockside temple. (Rats were also the first mariners, teaching man the art.) She is depicted nude with her hair in one braid long as her slender self and with eight dainty rat dugs; two centered in small high breasts, the next pair low on her rib cage, two flanking her cord scar, and two close to either side her maiden mound above the leg crease."

“My, such a multiplicity of charms! One wonders whether to envy or despise.” Afreyt chuckled.

“Her cult's a very popular one, Lady,” the girl replied somewhat defensively as she scrubbed away. “She commands demons, it is believed, and has enjoyed the services of Queen Frixifrax of Arilia."

Afreyt laughed. “Truth to tell, child, I would have been inclined to rate your whole rat tale nonsense, like half the stories fed us Rime Islers dwelling on the edge of things to awe and befool us, did it not fit so well with what Fafhrd has told me about his and Captain Mouser's greatest adventure (though there were more than one of those, to hear them talk) during the last days of Overlord Glipkerio's reign, when there was an incursion or eruption of armed rats into Lankhmar City, along with many other weird events, and involving the unscrupulous grain merchant Hisvin and his scandalous daughter Hisvet, both the rats’ allies and bearing the same names as the two saints in your own strange tale."

“I am grateful your Ladyship believes at least partly in my truthful account,” Fingers replied a little huffily. “I may be overcredulous, Lady, but never a liar."

Afreyt turned around smiling. “Don't be so formal and serious,” she chided merrily. “Give me the brush and turn your back."

The girl complied, facing the two high horn windows to the outside, which were now whitening with the rising moon a day past full. Afreyt scraped the brush across a lump of green soap and set to work, saying, “During the twists and turns of that famous rat-man fracas in Lankhmar (it happed at least ten years ago—you'd have been still an infant at Tovilyis), the Gray Mouser had to pretend a great love for this Hisvet chit (so Fafhrd tells me), pursuing her through a series of magical size changes from Lankhmar Above down to Lankhmar Below and then back again. His true love then was a royal kitchen slave named Reetha, at least she was the one he ended up with. At that time Fafhrd's consort was the Ghoulish warrior-maid Kreeshkra—a walking skeleton because Ghouls’ flesh's invisible, their bones on view. Truly there are times when I don't know if I can believe half of the things Fafhrd says, while the Mouser's always a great liar—he boasts of it."

“I was told Ghouls ate people,” Fingers observed, bracing her back against Afreyt's brisk scrubbing. “And much later I heard about the latter-day rat war in Lankhmar. Friska told me about it in Ilthmar, after we'd moved there from Tovilyis, when she was warning me against believing everything the rat priests told us."

“Friska?” Afreyt questioned, pausing in her scrubbing.

“My mother's name when she was a slave in Quarmall before she escaped to Tovilyis, where I was born. She hasn't always used it afterward and I don't think I've mentioned it until now."

“I see,” Afreyt said absently, as though lost in sudden thought.

“You've stopped doing my back,” the girl observed.

“Because it's done,” the other said. “It's pink all over. Tell me, child, did your mother Friska escape from Quarmall all by herself?"

“No, Lady, she had her friend Ivivis with her, whom I grew to calling aunt in Tovilyis,” Fingers explained, turning back so she faced the narrow gray door again, its outlines visible once more through the thinning steam. “They were smuggled out of Quarmall by their lovers, two mercenary warriors quitting the service of Quarmal and his two sons. The cavern world of Quarmall's no easy place to escape from, Lady, deep, secret, and mysterious. Fugitives are recaptured or die strangely. In the ports that rim the Inner Sea—Lankhmar, Ilthmar, Kvarch Nar, Ool Hrusp—it's deemed as fabulous a place as this Rime Isle."

“What happened to the two mercenaries who were your mother's and aunt's lovers and worked their escape?” Afreyt inquired.

“Ivivis quarreled with hers, and upon reaching Tovilyis, enlisted in the Guild of Free Women. My mother was nearing her time (my time, it was) and elected to stay with her friend. Her lover (my father) left her money and swore to return some day, but of course never did."

There was a flurry of knocking and the narrow gray door opened and closed, admitting Gale, who peered around eagerly through the thinning steam.

“Has Uncle Fafhrd flown back down from the sky?” she demanded. “Why didn't you wake me? Those are his things outside, Aunty Afreyt!"

“Not yet,” that lady told her, “but there have been messages of sorts from him, or so it seems. After you two were sleeping, May brought me Fafhrd's belt, which she'd found hanging on a berry bush as though fallen from the sky. Her words, though she'd not heard your tale. I sent her and others hunting and went out myself, and there were soon discovered his two boots (one on a roof) and dirk and small-ax, which had split the council hall's weathercock."

“He cast them down to lighten ship when he got above the fog.” Gale rushed to conclusions.

“That's the best guess I've heard,” Afreyt said, reaching the dipper to Gale, handle first. “Renew the steam,” she directed. “One cup."

The girl obeyed. There was a gentler sizzling, and warm steam came billowing up around them again.

“Maybe he's waiting for tonight's fog,” the girl suggested. “I'm much more worried about Uncle Mouser."

“The digging goes on and another clue's been unearthed—a sharpened iron tik (Lankhmar's least coin) such as the Gray One habitually carries on his person. So Cif told me when she was here early afternoon to bathe and change, while you two were still asleep. There'd been some difficulty about the air, but your aunt took care of it."

“They'll find him,” Gale assured her.

“I share both your hopes for both the Captains,” Fingers put in, returning somewhat to formality.

“Fafhrd will be all right,” Gale asserted confidently. “You see, I think he needs the fog to buoy him up, at least until he gets started stroking well, and the fog will be back before dawn. He'll swim down then."

“Gale thinks her uncle can do anything,” Afreyt explained, scrubbing her vigorously. “He's her hero."

“He certainly is,” the girl maintained aggressively. “And because he's my uncle, there can't be anything between us to spoil it when I'm fully grown up."

“Truly a hero has many lady loves: whores, innocents, princesses,” Fingers observed in tones that were both earnest and worldly wise. “That's one of the first things my mother told me."

“Friska?” Afreyt checked.

“Friska,” Fingers confirmed, and then bethought herself of a compliment that would sustain the worldly mood which she enjoyed. “I must say, Lady, that I greatly admire the coolness and lack of jealousy with which you regard your lover's previous attachments. For Captain Fafhrd is surely a hero—I suspected as much when he began so swiftly and resolutely to dig for his friend and set the rest of us all helping. I became completely certain when he took off so blithely into the sky on his friend's service."

“I don't know about all that,” Afreyt replied, eyeing Fingers somewhat dubiously, “especially my coolness toward love rivals of whatever age or condition. Though it's true Fafhrd's had an awful many sweethearts, to hear him talk (the Mouser the same), and not only from those classes you mention, but really weird ones like the Ghouless Kreeshkra and that wholly invisible snowmount Princess Hirriwi and (for Mouse) that eight-tit slinky Hisvet—everything from demonesses to mermaids and shimmersprites.” Warming to it, she continued, “But I think Cif and I are a match for them, at least in quality if not numbers. We've bedded gods ourselves—or at least arranged for their bedding,” she added correctively and a bit guiltily, remembering.

Listening to this recital, Gale seemed to get a bit uneasy, certainly wide-eyed. Fingers put an arm around her shoulders, saying, “So you see, little one, it is better to have one's hero a friend and uncle only, is it not?"

Afreyt couldn't resist saying, “Aren't you overdoing the wise old aunt a bit?” Then, recalling Fingers's circumstances, she dropped her smile, adding, “But I was forgetting ... you know what."

Fingers nodded gravely and fetched a sigh that she thought suitable for A Cabin-girl Against Her Will. Then she gave a squeal. Gale had yanked her hair.

“I don't know about Uncle Fafhrd,” the Rimish girl told her, making a face, “but I certainly want you as a friend and not an aunty!"

“And now it's time we stopped talking heroes and she-devils and got back to worrying about two real men,” Afreyt picked that moment to announce. “Come on, I'll rinse you."

And taking up the water container, she poured a gush each on the blond and reddish heads, then emptied it over her own head.

Returning back to that same eventful day's darksome beginning, we find Fafhrd trudging frantically east by leviathan light from the lamp he carried and with a feather-footedness and hectic lightheadedness that puzzled and alarmed him, across the frosty Great Meadow toward fog-blanketed Salthaven and the horizon beyond, paling with the imminent dawn. His anxiety for the Mouser in desperate plight, his selfish urge to shuck off that bondage, and his wishful hope for a miracle solution to this problem ... these three feelings balled up unendurably within him, so that he lifted the brown brandy jug in his right hand to his teeth and fixed them around the protruding cork, biting into it, and drew the jug from off it, spat the cork aside, and downed two swallows that were like lightning brands straight down his throat.

Then yielding to an unanticipated yet imperative impulse, born perhaps of the two blazing swigs, he scanned the sky ahead above the fog.

And, lo, the miracle! For a wide stream of brightness, traveling up the pale sky from the impending sun, called his attention to a small fleet of on-cruising clouds. And as he inspected those five pearl-gray white-edged shapes with a sharp clear vision that was like youth returned, he discerned that the midmost was shaped like a large slender pinnace with towering stern-castle driven by a single translucent sail that bellied smoothly toward him, by all signs a demigalleon of the cloud queendom of Arilia, fable no longer.

And as if there had resounded in his ear a single chime, infinitely stirring and sweet, of the silver bell with which they'd sound the watches upon such a vessel, the knowledge came to him—a message and more—that his old comrade-mistress Frix was aboard her, captaining her crew. And the confident determination was born on him to join her there. And his concern for the Mouser and what Afreyt and his men expected of him dropped away, and he no longer worried about the girls Fingers and Gale following him, and his footsteps grew carefree and light as those of his youth on a Cold Corner hunting morn. He took a measured sup of brandy and skipped ahead.

The women whom Fafhrd loved seriously (and he rarely loved otherwise) seemed to him when he thought about it to split into the two classes of comrade-mistresses and beloved girls. The former were fearless, wise, mysterious, and sometimes cruel; the latter were timorous, adoring, cute, and mostly faithful—sometimes to the point of making too much of it. Both were—apparently had to be, alas—young and beautiful, or at least appear so. The comrade-mistresses were best at that last, on the whole.

Oddly, the beloved girls were more apt to have been actual comrades, sharing day-to-day haps, mishaps, and boredoms, than the others. What made the others seem more like comrades, then? When he asked himself that, which he did seldom, he was apt to decide it was because they were more realistic and logical, thought more like men, or at least like himself. Which was a desirable thing, except when they carried their realism and logic to the point where it became unpleasantly painful to him. Which accounted for their cruel streak, to be sure.

And then the comrade-mistresses more often than not had a supernatural or at least preternatural aura about them. They partook of the demonic and divine.

Fafhrd's first beloved girl had been his childhood sweetheart Mara, whom he'd got pregnant, only to run away with his first comrade-mistress, the wandering actress and failed thief Vlana, one of the unsupernatural ones, her only glamors those of stage and crime.

Other super- and preternatural females had included the Ghoulish she-soldier Kreeshkra, a transparent-fleshed beautiful walking skeleton, and the wholly invisible (save when she tinted her skin or resorted to like stratagem such as wetting herself before being pelted by a lover with rose petals) Princess Hirriwi of Stardock.

Sample beloved girls were Luzy of Lankhmar, the fair swindler Nemia of the Dusk (not all of this class, too, were law-abiding), and faint-hearted and bouncing Friska, whom he'd rescued from the cruelties of Quarmall—not altogether willingly. On learning his wild plan she'd told him, “Take me back to the torture chamber."

But of all his lady lovers, first in his heart was Hisvet's onetime slave-maid and guardian, the tall, dark-haired, and altogether delicious Frix, now again Queen Frixifrax of Arilia, although she was almost, but not quite, too tall and slender. (Just as he knew that Hisvet herself, though heartless and mostly cruel, was somehow the Mouser's inmost favorite.)

Above all else, Frix's love was ever tactful, and even in scenes of extremest ecstasy and peril she had an utterly fearless and completely dispassionate overview of life, as if she saw it all as a grand melodrama, even to the point of coolly calling out stage directions to the participants of an orgy or melee whilst chaos whirled about them.

Of course this train of reasoning left out Afreyt, surely the best of comrade-mistresses as well as his current one, a better archer than himself, loving and wise, an altogether admirable woman—and able to get along with Mouser too.

But Afreyt, though greatly gifted, was wholly human, while the demonic and divine Frix fairly glimmered with supernatural highlights. As at this very moment, when after another and larger swig of brandy on the fly, a short but steady sighting far ahead miraculously showed her standing at the bow of her cloud-pinnace like a figurehead carved of pale ivory as she cheered and welcomed him on. This wondrous apparition of her touched off a memory flash of an assignation with her in a mountaintop castle where they'd ingeniously spied together on two of her waiting ladies tall and mantis-slender as herself while they were mutually solacing each other, and later joined them in their gentle sport.

That ivory prow-vision, together with attendant memories, made him feel light as air and added yards to his stride, so that his next two skimming skips carried him knee-deep and waist-deep into the fog bank, while the third never ended. He drained the brandy jug of its last skimpy swallow, cast it and the lamp behind him to either side, and then swam forward up the face of the deepening fog bank, employing a powerful breaststroke while flattening his legs like a fish's tail.

Exultation suffused him as he felt himself mounting the side of a long stationary swell in an ocean of foam, but his strong sweeping strokes soon carried him above the fog. He resolutely forbore to look down, keeping his gaze upon the wondrously prowed white pinnace, concentrating all his attention and energies on flight. He felt his deltoid and pectoral muscles swell and lengthen and his arms flatten into wings. The rhythm of flight took over.

He noted that, though still mounting, he was veering to the left because of the lesser purchase his hook got on the air than the palm-paddle of his good right hand, but instead of trying to correct he kept on undauntedly, confident the motion would bring him around in a great circle in sight of his goal again and closer to it.

And so it did. He continued to mount in great spirals. He noted that along the way five snowy sea gulls had appeared and were soaring up circularly too, evenly spaced around him like the points of a pentacle. It gave him a warm feeling to be so escorted.

He was well into his fifth spiral and nearing his goal, momentarily waiting for the cloud-ship to swing into his view from the left behind him, the sun's rays baking through his clothes becoming almost uncomfortable. He was selecting just the right words with which to greet his aerial paramour when he flew into shadow and something hard yet resilient struck the back of his head a shrewd blow, so that black spots and flashing diamond points danced in his eyes and all his senses wavered.

His first reaction to this unexpected assault was to look up behind him.

A dark pearl-gray, wind-weathered, smoothly rounded leviathan-long shape hovered above him just out of reach—as he discovered when he grasped at it with hand and hook, his second reaction. It seemed to be drifting sideways slowly. He'd bumped into the hull of the cloud-ship he'd been seeking and then rebounded from it somewhat.

His third reaction, as the pain in his skull lessened and his vision cleared somewhat, was a mistake. He looked down.

The whole southwest corner of Rime Isle lay below him, uncomfortably small and far down: Salthaven town and harbor with its tiny red roofs and wisp-pennoned toothpick masts thrusting through its thinning coverlet of fog, the rocky coast leading off west, the narrow lofty headland to the east, and north of that the Great Maelstrom spinning furiously, an infinitely menacing foamy pinwheel.

The sight froze Fafhrd's privates. His reaction was anything but beat his wings (arms, rather), flutter his legs-tail, resuming flying, and so land lightly on the cloud-craft's deck and sketch a bow to Frix. The blow had halted all those avian rhythms as if they'd never possessed him; it had nauseated him, switched him from glorious drunkenness to near puking hangover in a trice. Instead of master of the air, he felt as if he were flimsily glued to it up here, pasted to this height by some fragile magic, so that the least wrong move, or wrong thought even, might break the flimsy bond and pitch him down, down, down!

His sailor's instinct was to lighten ship. It was the last resort when your vessel was sinking, and so presumably the wisest course when falling was the danger. With infinite caution and deliberation he began a series of slow contortions calculated to bring his manual extremities of hand and hook into successive contact with his feet, waist, neck, and so forth, so as to rid himself of all abandonable weight whatever without at the same time making some uncalculated movement that would cause him to come unstuck from the sky wherein he was so precariously poised.

This course of action had the added advantage of concentrating all his attention on his body and the space immediately around it, so he was not tempted to look down again and suffer the full pangs of vertigo.

He did note, as he gently cast aside his right and left boot, ax and dirk, their sheaths, finally his pouch and iron-studded belt, that they floated off slowly to about the distance of a man's length, then dropped away as if jerked down, seeming almost to vanish instantly—suggesting some magical sphere or spell of safety about him.

He didn't trust it.

So long as he confined himself to discarding such relatively ponderous and rigid items, his convoy of gulls continued to circle him evenly, but when he continued on to divest himself of all his garments (for this seemed certainly no time for half measures) they broke formation and (either attracted by the flimsy and flappable nature of his discards, or else outraged at the shameless impropriety of his action) made fierce darts and dives at and upon each piece of clothing to the accompaniment of raucous barking squawks and bore them off triumphantly in their sharp talons as if reasserting the honor of their squadron.

Fafhrd paid very little attention to these captious avian antics, concentrated as he was upon making not the least incautious or marginally violent movement.

Eventually he had divested himself of his very last implement and garment save for one.

It shows how much he had come to think of his hook together with the cork-and-leather cuff carrying it as his true left hand that he did not jettison them with the rest of the abandonable material.

But it was not until he'd stripped himself stark naked (save for hook) that he bethought himself of a final way to “lighten ship.” He was admiring the bright golden gleam of the powerful stream of urine arching above him and then down over his head out of his vision's range (it had first hit him in the eye but he corrected); it was not until then that he realized that in the course of his emergency undressing he had passed out of the shadow of the cloud-craft's hull and was bathed in full hot sunlight (which had, coincidentally, counterbalanced nicely any chill he might otherwise have felt at abandoning his last scrap of clothing in the sharp air of early morning).

But where had the Arilian cloud-vessel got to? He looked about and finally saw its narrow deck its own ship's length beneath him—a score of yards at least. Meanwhile, he himself was slowly but steadily mounting to portside of its rather ghostly or at least somewhat translucent mast top and upper rigging, whereon were perched the five raptorial gulls, busily shredding with claws and beaks the clothing they'd appropriated from him and, looking more now like cormorants than gulls, staring at him from time to time disgustedly.

And now a wholly different, in fact opposite fear took sudden hold of Fafhrd—that he might continue to rise inexorably until all below became too tiny to be seen and he was lost in space, or until he reached the forever frost-capped height of mountain-tops and perished of cold—especially when chilly night came on (how stupid he'd been to discard all his clothes—he'd been in a dismal panic that was sure!)—or got himself devoured by the airy monsters that inhabited such altitudes such as the invisible giant fliers he'd first encountered on Stardock, or even reach the mysterious stars (if he lasted that long before dying of thirst and hunger) and be dazzled to death by them or suffer whatever other fate the Bright Ones kept in store for impudent venturers such as he must appear to them.

Unless, of course, he had the good fortune to encounter the moon first or the secret (invisible?) Queendom of Arilia, if that were anything more than a great fleet of cloud-ships.

This thought reminded him that there was such a ship close at hand, of which he'd had great hopes and expectations before the brandy had died in him.

After a moment's gloomy apprehension that it had heartlessly sailed off or perhaps vanished entire (its upper works at least had looked so very ghostly), he was relieved to see it still floated below him, though some thirty feet farther down than at last glimpse—there was at least that distance between him and the masthead with its quincunx of cormorantishly-behaving sea gulls, who still shredded his garments vindictively, although their shrill squawkings had subsided.

He searched the vessel with his eyes for Frix, but the tall, supernally attractive beauty was nowhere to be seen, not in the bow impersonating a figurehead, or anywhere else—if she ever had been present, he added wryly, to anything but his overeager and overbrandied imagination.

He did spot, however, a sixth figure in the rigging, besides the birds, a trim young woman halfway up it on the other side of the rigging, faced away from him and leaning back against the ratlines with arms outspread as if to expose herself to sun's rays. She wore an abbreviated white lace chemise, was barefoot, and carried a small curved silver trumpet slung round her neck. She was also too short for Frix and a blonde to boot, instead of raven-tressed.

Fafhrd called down “Ahoy!” not softly, but not unnecessarily loudly either, for although his new fear of rising indefinitely preoccupied his thoughts, he still entertained the conviction that any violent movement or speech would be unwise. Just rising a few yards did not convince him that he could not fall, especially when he surveyed the emptiness below.

The lazing maiden did not look up or give the least other indication that she had heard him.

“Ahoy!” Fafhrd repeated, quite a bit more loudly, but again with no discernible reaction from her, unless her yawn now was intended as that.

“Ahoy!” Fafhrd bellowed, forgetting his worries about the possible dire effects of loud noises.

Rather slowly, then, she turned her head and lifted her face toward him. But nothing more.

“Cloud girl,” Fafhrd called down in friendly tones but a shade peremptorily, “summon your mistress on deck. I'm an old friend."

She went on staring at him. Nothing more, except perhaps to lift her brows superciliously.

Fafhrd called sharply, “I'm Captain Fafhrd, out of Seahawk,” naming his ship riding at anchor in Rime harbor. “And as you can plainly see, I'm in distress. Inform your captain of these circumstances. And be assured she knows me well."

After staring at him a while more, the cloud girl nodded moodily and descended to the deck hand over hand, taking her time, and after another look up at him, strolled toward the stern-castle.

Fafhrd was annoyed. “Oh, hurry up, girl,” he called, “and if it's formalities you want, tell the Queen of Arilia that an old friend respectfully craves instant audience."

She paused in the door of the stern-castle to look up at him once more and inquire in a shrill pert voice, “Was that the respect led you to piss on our ship?” before she flipped up the tail of her chemise and vanished inside.

Fafhrd made dignified growling noises in his throat, though there were none to hear them but the gulls, and was emboldened to try to swim down to the cloud-ship's mast top, getting himself positioned with head turned down toward it, body upside down, though it took an intense effort of will to make himself use full power in what persisted in seeming an attempt to come unstuck from the heights and launch a disastrous fall. He kept himself aimed at the rigging so he'd intercept it if the worst occurred.

He was breathing heavily and had fought his way down, he judged, about a quarter of the distance when the saucy cloud girl reemerged, followed (at last!) by Frix, garbed like a dashing captain of Amazon marines in tropical dress uniform of silver-trimmed white lace which strikingly set off her slender form, dark hair, and coppery complexion wonderfully, white deerskin hip boots, a wide-brimmed hat of like material, with ostrich plumes and a silver-studded belt of snow-serpent hide from which depended a long slim saber with silver fittings.

She glanced up at shaggy-headed, hairy, naked Fafhrd laboring down toward her with prodigious effort and spoke a word to the cloud maiden clad in her scanty lace, who lifted her silver trumpet to her lips and blew a sweet and stirring call.

Whereupon there came trooping from the stern-castle six tall willowy women akin to Frix in figure and dress-uniformed like to the soldiers in such a captain's company, except that from their unstudded belts there hung, not swords, but in each instance three objects which Fafhrd first identified as a cased small-dirk, a tiny sporran, and a small cylindrical canteen, while upon their neatly short-cropped heads were uniform caps of colors peach, lime, lemon, vermilion, lavender, and robin's egg, counting from first to last as they lined up. They were followed by a smaller she, who might have been the pert trumpeter's twin, except the silver instrument she carried was a crossbow from which depended a coil of thin silver line. Frix spoke to her, pointing upward. She dropped to a bare knee, and bending her back acutely and letting the coil fall to the deck beside her, aimed her piece at Fafhrd.

Fortunately for his composure, he divined her intent and dear Frix's purpose just as she let fly.

Her flashing missile mounted swiftly and surely. The line it carried aloft uncoiled from the deck with rippling smoothness and nary a tangle. The blunt silver quarrel reached the apex of its flight a foot from Fafhrd's face. His right hand closed upon it confidently, as if he were capturing a stingless glow wasp. The six tall and almost spidery-slender mariners took up the other end of the silvery line and began to haul. Fafhrd felt the line tighten without parting and himself drawn down perceptibly as they hauled, and at that very instant he began to experience a sweet relief such as is felt only by one who knows himself to be secure in the true hands of love.

His breathing evened out, his relaxing muscles seemed all to lengthen individually, he felt himself become as willowy (in a wholly male wise, he assured himself) as the six delightful creatures drawing him down against his natural (unnatural, rather!) buoyancy. After a final flutter or two of his lower limbs and sweep of his hook-terminated free arm, he resigned to them that small and almost frolicksome labor. He might even have closed his eyes, it felt so restful, except he was beginning to enjoy so thoroughly using them to inspect his destination. The cloud pinnace was such a handsome vessel, and the longer he gazed at its rigging and sails the realer they got.

From time to time as he let himself be played in, like a willingly caught fish of air, came nagging remembrances of his friends on Rime Isle below, and the Mouser still deeper down, and of their likely worries over him, and their own more troublesome plights. But he wasn't gone for long, not really gone, just receiving sorely needed refreshment aloft, he told himself more than once.

Finding himself now level with the mainmast top, he gave some thought to how he appeared to his rescuers. He decided against transferring to the rigging—no one seemed to expect him to and he might well seem ridiculous, as in trying to decide whether to go down the rigging head first or feet. So he merely avoided becoming entangled in it. There wasn't much he could do about nakedness except let himself be drawn in behind the handheld quarrel with grace and easy dignity, no contortions, his legs together like a fish's tail. He sketched a wave or two with his hook to the glowering cormorants (no, gulls!) as he passed them by.

When his descent had begun, his rescuers had been no more than six tallish, very slender, like-clad females hauling in unison upon the line with easy gracefulness, but now he began to perceive their individualities. The first on the line, she of the peach cap, was a rangy blonde structured like a coursing leopard (Nehwon's swiftest four-foot beast) from the desert steppes of Evamarensee, with small breasts like firmly-bedded half pomegranates, while through the white tropic lace of her uniform showed a rosy orange hue, indicating she wore an under-chemise of like tint to her cap. Withal she was of haughty mien, with jutting brow, icy-blue eyes, and hollowed cheeks, a mole on the left one near the nostril. By Kos, it was Floy! During his last rendezvous but one with Frix and her ladies in a star-grazing Arilian pleasure palace upon a sky-scraping peak in the moon-raking mountain range which rims the northern shore of Nehwon's southern continent, facing the planet-ringing equatorial ocean, he had on a wager let himself be bound naked so securely he could move not a finger and then watched Frix and Floy erotically delight to culminating first themselves with themselves alone and then, exercising infinite slow inventiveness, each other whilst alternately Floy recited “The Rapes of St. Hisvet and Skeldir” and Frix gave a dry clinical account of her and Floy's every least action and the response thereto—until he came, which he'd bet he'd not.

But now his steady descent turned Fafhrd's attention to the approaching deck. Reaching down his left arm, he hooked a ratline, and drawing himself down strongly with both arms, he jackknifed his body without bending his knees and landed solidly on the soles of both feet at once.

Then, maintaining the downward pull with hook alone, he straightened himself erect, facing the grinning crossbow girl. She was of the small wiry acrobatic sort the Mouser favored, fair complected, and the lace of her chemise showed through no extraneous color. He nodded his approval and handed her upon his palm the silver quarrel by which he'd been drawn in.

She took it without demur or change of grin and gave him, as if in return, a gold bracelet of doughnut shape large enough to fit his thick wrist. It was of the solid soft metal, he judged—massy enough by itself to balance his weird buoyancy.

“Thank you, archer,” he said. She nodded and began to coil the line that the marines with caps of varying hue (should he think of them as Frix's color guard?) had let drop.

His recognition of Floy having intensified his general awareness and brought pertinent memories close to hand, Fafhrd was able to greet the next two lady marines—the ones with pale green and yellow caps and lace-revealed underthings—with an easy, “Greetings, dear Bree, sweet Elowee."

But although both smiled guardedly, neither ventured so much as a word in reply. Bree shook her head slightly but sharply, frowning, while demure Elowee rolled her eyes back toward the end of the line, where Frix stood, and worked her features as though to say, “She's in one of her moods. Be careful."

Fafhrd recalled how he'd first met those two without their knowledge while he and Frix, wine cups in hand, were on a secret spying expedition to reawaken their venereal appetites. Entering a dark apartment, the Queen of the Air had led him to where black cushions closely circled a window in the floor that let upon a closet below, brightly lit by ranks of candles. Through painted gauze they'd observed these long-legged coltish creatures erotically ministering to each other. Bree enthusiastic and masterful, sometimes giving explicit directions, Elowee coy, protesting, and somewhat overheated (those candles!), even indignant. The infatuated pair had knelt closely side by side, kissing, fondling each other's small breasts, teasing the nipples big, and oft and anon a hand would drop down for a more thrilling and intrusive caress. After a while Frix had begun to whisper in Fafhrd's ear how the kneeling lovers might vary their touches were he the partner. He'd warned her the unconscious actors might overhear, but she'd assured him their ears had been well rubbed with a salve that reduced audition. Much later he'd discovered that things had not been as secret, or the actors as unknowing, as they'd seemed.

("That little hole was hot as hell,” Bree confided at a subsequent orgy, “but Frix insisted on the candles so you'd have no trouble seeing us clearly through the painted gauze. She's a fiend for detail. Oh, the things we've endured to tickle your lust and satisfy an artsy mistress—and Elowee got splashed with hot wax. It's a wonder we didn't burn down the pleasure palace.")

But now Bree's and Elowee's hidden warnings about Frix had caused Fafhrd to give thought to his own appearance and to the impression he was creating. He decided a bit more dignity and restraint were called for. He straightened himself further, slowed his stride, and let the golden torus dangle down from his hand with seeming carelessness, yet positioned so that it served somewhat as a golden fig leaf.

Yet he was hard put to maintain his unnatural gravity and not burst into laughter when he saw that the last three color-marines were his oldest erotic pals among Frix's ladies: the boisterous redhead Chimo, wicked-eyed and black-haired Nixi, and the saintly-appearing Bibi, who was forever finding new ways to play the simpleton and innocent.

There sprang up in his mind the memory of an idyllic Arilian vacation afternoon when he lay supine with his head pillowed upon Chimo's inner thigh where she sat spread-legged while Nixi knelt beyond her knee on his side and Bibi crouched high in the equilateral triangle made by his own spread legs. And ever and anon he'd roll his head to the near side and implant a long slow nibbling kiss along the length of Chimo's carmine nether lips and then roll his head the other way to suck and tongue the faintly rugose nipples of Nixi's small upstanding breasts, now pendant, while Chimo caressed them with her right hand. Bibi busied herself variously with his own erotic gear (whilst Chimo worked on hers—employment for the left hand) until waves of pleasure rolled in over him and time came almost to a stop.

And now, by all signs there was shaping up, he told himself, the possibility of another such great moment of supernal ecstasy indefinitely prolonged, or of an even greater one, did he not blow it by some unintended rejection or piece of boorish behavior.

Yes, indeed, he assured himself rapidly, things did seem to be working around to a grand payoff in the great game of trading heroic feats for intimate maidenly favors that all heroes lived or at least hoped by, no matter how disordered and irregular the bookkeeping.

And now, having greeted and inspected, as it were, the six slender marines of Frix's color guard, he found himself facing the dashing captain herself, attended by her trim trumpeter, standing before the inviting hatchway of the after-castle from which there poured warm, sweetly perfumed air. During the short tour he'd recovered a sense of his proper weight and thirst and appetites, only slightly troubled by an awareness of hairy and unwashed uncouthness.

Frix lifted a lace-gauntleted hand. “Greetings, old friend,” she spoke. “Welcome aboard Soft Airs."

“My thanks, dear lady,” he replied according to form, “for greatly needed and desired hospitality."

“Then you shall accompany us below, where are greater amenities,” she responded. “My ladies will busy themselves refreshing and arraying you, whilst you regale us, if you will, with an account of your recentest adventures, feats, and forays."

Fafhrd inclined his head. It occurred to him that this was the largest company of ladies with whom he'd ever been entertained by Frix. Had he really become a seven-maiden hero? Or, counting the two girls, a nine?

Smiling graciously, Frix turned to lead the way. The pert girl grimaced comically.

Fafhrd followed, thinking that the resources of a pleasure pinnace might well exceed those of a palace.

As the long-legged ladies trooped up around him familiarly, he noted that the objects depending from their white belts were actually a shaving mug, a large shaving brush (the sporran), and a razor.

When Fingers and Gale came hurrying downstairs from dressing, they found Afreyt deep in the perusal (or reperusal) of a creased and somewhat sullied paper with broken green seal writ in violet ink.

Gale cried out reproachfully, “Aunty Afreyt! You're reading the letter Pshawri gave you for safekeeping!"

Afreyt looked up. “You have sharp eyes,” she remarked. “Know child, it is the right—nay, duty!—of any grown-up (especially a woman) to read any document entrusted to them, so they may give testimony to its contents should it be stolen or taken forcibly from them before they are able to return or deliver it.” She folded and thrust it down her bosom. Gale eyed her dubiously, Fingers without expression. Afreyt arose. “And now on with your cloaks and winter gear,” she directed. “There's work for us at the diggings, I've no doubt."

A flurry of wind stung their faces with ice needles as they entered the night pale with the chill glow of the barely gibbous moon and a faint deep melancholy note resounded from the wind chimes the other side of Salthaven. Afreyt set a fast pace for the barracks. No others were abroad. At irregular intervals the wind chimes repeated their profound reverberation, like a god muttering in his sleep.

At the barracks were lights and labor and a loaded dogcart ready to leave. Afreyt commandeered it for herself and the girls, pulling rank on Mannimark, which drew from Gale a look of further disillusion with “grown-ups” as she clambered reluctantly aboard. Fingers took it more naturally, copying the older woman's queenly mien and manner.

“Any message for the diggings?” that one asked the mustached man as she took the long whip from its socket. “I'll make your excuses, Sergeant. I'm sure the other cart will be back for you soon."

“No mind, Lady,” he answered. “We'll walk."

“Very well, Sergeant.” And with a whip crack and jingle of bells the cart was off, making a sharp turn that headed them into the cutting wind and away from the risen low-moon. The girls ducked their faces into their hoods but Afreyt lifted hers high. The occasional boom of the chimes grew less faint as they approached the Moon Temple, and then there was added to it a still deeper clanking as a heavier beam was struck and boomed its note.

“The north blast quickens,” she commented. “It will be bitter crossing the Meadow."

Soon the fire facing the shelter tent became their beacon and promise of warmth. Afreyt signaled their approach with a flurry of whip cracks.

“Where's Lady Cif?” she asked the knot of soup drinkers.

“At the face, Lady,” Skullick replied.

“Unload,” she directed, and springing down, followed by the girls, made for the pit, whence rose a short pale column of white light.

Beside it the pile of dug dirt was higher and wider and Fren walked a strange short sentry-go, stepping on the forward edge of the big forge-bellows next the pit edge, mounting its slant in three short steps (which made it sink), giving its top handle an upward yank after stepping off it (which helped an interior spring expand it again), drawing in air, and so back to the pit edge and repeat the mini-march.

Peering down the shaft from the opposite edge of the hole, the three females saw how the first furry snow-white serpent's hide emerged from the bellow's front and curved downward, its crested head clamping its jaws on the tail of the second, and so on downward until the fifth entered the cross corridor at the shaft's bottom, where two leviathan lamps provided illumination.

They could see the furry tube slacken and swell as each successive giant's breath of fresh air traveled down.

Afreyt explained to the girls, “Each tail tip is clipped off short and thrust inside the jaws of the preceding snow serpent, a clear glue making the juncture airtight. Spirits of wine dissolve this, so the hides may be parted, cleaned, and restored (the tail tips are kept) to something like their original value afterward. Else all would be monstrously unthrifty.” And with a sign to the windlass man and a “You next” to the girls, she stepped into the empty pail and traveled down beside the slowly pulsating, furry white tube, stepped out at the bottom and waited until it returned with Fingers and Gale.

The horizontal passage was a dimly lit, stone-floored, narrow, unlofty rectangle, so that Afreyt must stoop as she led the way, although the girls were able to walk upright as they followed.

“I expected it to be warmer underground,” Gale observed.

“The dragon's breath we're blowing down is chill,” the older woman reminded her. “Look, there's a fortune in wood around us,” she told the girls.

“A hero's life is worth any expenditure,” Fingers assured her somewhat loftily.

“So it behooves those who may have to ransom or rescue them to lay up cash,” Afreyt responded. “Luckily the lumber's all salvageable, like the hides."

Just ahead appeared to be solid rock, and seemingly from it, but actually from around it, there materialized a short man carrying a full pail before him and another behind. It was the Mouser's other lieutenant, Mikkidu. They managed to squeeze past him and then along a short section of corridor where the left wall was stone, the right wood, until it had jogged past the obstruction into bright light, which showed their journey's end eight yards ahead.

From the ceiling's last short crossboard hung a large leviathan lamp, while beneath the as yet unroofed yard of tunnel, Cif knelt away from them and worked at the naked face with wooden trowel and gloved left hand, scraping and brushing away the stuff that was of a consistency between flaky sandstone and packed sand. While supported by an upslanted peg in the right-hand wall, the last snow-serpent puffed chill gusts that stirred the falling dust and fine debris.

So great was the small woman's concentration on her exacting task that she was unaware of their presence until Afreyt touched her shoulder.

She turned on them a blank stare, swiftly rising to her feet. Then her eyes wavered and she lurched forward into her friend's arms.

“You're out on your feet,” Afreyt protested. “You should have been relieved at the face hours ago! Here, take a swallow of this,” she added, withdrawing a silver flask from her pouch and uncorking it with her teeth while continuing to support Cif with her other arm.

The outwearied woman grasped it and gulped the watered brandy greedily.

“Have you had any rest at all since coming out this noon?” Afreyt demanded.

“I lay in the tent awhile, but it made me nervous."

“So you're coming up at once with me. There's a new matter we must discuss alone. Gale! Take over here at the face. Fingers can help you—it's a sort of work her deft hands should be good at."

“Oh good!” said Gale.

Fingers: “You honor me."

Cif made no demur, accepting support but asking, “What new matter?"

“All in good time."

Just past the jog they encountered Mikkidu returning with empty pails. Afreyt addressed him, “I'm taking the lady Cif home for long-needed rest. You're in charge now. Gale and our new friend Fingers are working the face. See that they aren't kept at it too long and are both sent to Cif's house by midnight."

When he shot Cif a look of inquiry, she nodded and then remembered to give him Fafhrd's ring.

Aboveground the dogcart had been unloaded and Skullick was greeting Mannimark and Faf's berserk Gort as they came loping in.

Afreyt poured Cif a mouthful of hot soup and directed, “Hitch up fresh dogs. I'm driving the lady Cif home. She needs rest badly. No other load. Here Mikkidu has the ring."

“Mara and May were due to go this trip,” Skullick pointed out. The blond girls waved from where they huddled in the shelter tent.

“I'll take them, of course,” Afreyt said. “Girls, climb aboard! And take a blanket with you. And another for Lady Cif."

Returning to Salthaven, they all had the wind at their backs, which was some improvement. None was inclined to talk. Midway Cif asked suspiciously, “Was there poppy dust in the watered brandy you fed me? It has a sickly, bitter aftertaste."

“Only enough to induce tranquillity and encourage sleep, but not enforce it."

Afreyt drove straight to Cif's and had the girls return the cart to the barracks before wending to their own homes. She warmed a solid meal while Cif got comfortable, saw it consumed, then poured them both brandy and handed Cif the letter Pshawri had entrusted to her, saying, “I've read it, of course. Matter of import for you, certainly."

Cif studied the broken green seal and the violet-inked address as she unfolded it. “This sheet was in the Captain's last mail bag from Lankhmar,” she averred, “before he distributed the letters to his men."

Then she was silent while she read to herself the following:

Dear Son Pshawri,
I hope this finds you alive and continuing to prosper on your northern adventure in service of that notable rogue the Gray Mouser.
I am to tell you he has more reason to make you his lieutenant than even he weens.
When you were young I pointed him out to you among other noteworthy Lankhmarts. But I did not see fit to tell you (or him) that he was your father. Such tactics seldom work out, to my knowledge and experience, and I would scorn to curry favor in such a way.
It happened in my salad days, before I became a professional woman, and while I was body maid to the dancer Ivrian and we were all caught up in a supernal intrigue involving the Thieves Guild, some of its jeweled relics, and the Mouser's uncouth barbarian comrade Fafhrd.
They vied with each other to seduce me. Fafhrd loved me the more, but the Mouser was tricksier and measured his drinks more carefully—and mine. The best of what I know of the uses of evil and falsity was taught me by that devil.
But now you find yourself by chance in service of the very same man, you may find the knowledge of advantage to you. Use it as you see fit. Luckily the relationship is supported by evidence. Triads of equidistant moles run in his family.
Thanks for the silver ring and seven rilks.
Prosper,
your loving mother Freg

Cif lifted her eyes to Afreyt's. “That letter rings true to me,” she said, nodding soberly.

“You think so too?” the other replied.

“By Skama's scales, what else! It is man's nature to plant his seed where'er the soil looks good."

“A hero's doubly so...” Afreyt chimed, “whence else his deeds of daring?"

Cif mused, “When we told Mou and Faf of our courting of the stranger gods Odin and Loki in Rime Isle's service and even setting sexual lures and ties for them, I recall they hinted of their own conquests among female divinities—the viewless Stardock princesses, some nixies of the sea, the rat queen Hisvet, and some princess of the air who served her as a maid."

Afreyt pointed out, “This woman claiming Pshawri as her son would seem to have no noble blood at all, let alone divine. How would you feel should he claim son-right of Captain Mouser?"

Cif looked up sharply. “Pshawri has served Mou faithfully and may do more than that in this now quest! I favor Pshawri's claim. The resemblances between them run deep—Mou bears upon his hip a triad of dark moles."

“Another question,” Afreyt went on. “Has your Gray lover ever professed to you any out-of-way sexual tastes?"

“Has your red-haired barbarian?” Cif countered.

“I don't know if you could rightly call it out-of-way,” the other said with a wry laugh, “but once when we were playing somewhat listlessly abed, he suggested inviting Rill to join us. I told him I'd strangle him first and indeed tried to. In the excitement of the delirium this led to, the original proposal was forgotten at the time and just how playful or serious it had been at the time of it being made."

Cif laughed, then grew thoughtful in turn. “I once recall the Mouser pestering me as to whether I'd ever felt an attraction to the same sex as my own. At the time I put him in his place, of course, telling I had no truck with any such filthy practices, but since I have wondered once or twice about his curiosity."

Afreyt looked at her quizzically. “Oh,” she said, “so you didn't tell him about our...” She left her words hanging.

“But we were barely more than girls when that happened,” Cif protested.

“True indeed,” Afreyt said. “Barely fourteen, as I recall. But you are drowsing off, I plainly see. And so, to tell the truth, am I."

Next time the Gray Mouser came first to consciousness, he had forgotten not only who but what he was.

He wondered why a darkness-dwelling creature that was no more than a limp fleshy pocket not moist enough for its own comfort and occupied by two hard, smooth, pointy semicircular ridges that fit together neatly and by a sort of blind sessile snail busy exploring itself and its container endlessly and scavenging life-giving air from the dry grainy outside, should be equipped with a mighty mind capable of mastering whole worlds of life and experience.

The sentient pocket with in-dwelling restless mollusk knew of its mind's might from the variety and rapid sequence of its inscrutable mysterious thoughts and memories which threatened momently to burst into clarity and stain the omnipresent dark with flaring colors. It knew its dry, grainy, closely packed immediate surroundings by a dull yellow glow so dim as hardly to deserve the name of light at all. It was a sort of dim seeing locked in solidity.

Without preamble or warning there blazed up for this buried mind the moving picture of a brilliantly lamp-lit room, lined with a great map of Nehwon-world and shelves of ancient books, wherein a venerable, kingly, seated biped beast silently discoursed to a considerably smaller version of itself standing attentively before it.

Memory told the sentient pocket that the beast was man, and then in a flash of insight it realized that behind the handsome full red mobile lips known as mouth lay such a moist pocket as itself with pale pointy smooth ridges called teeth and an indwelling anchor named tongue, and that as a consequence of all this there must be attached to it a body such as that of the beast under view and itself be man also, however cabined and confined in grainy earth.

Instantly his mind began to get a host of little messages from this attached body, which turned out to be in fetal position with both hands tenderly cupping its genitals, rag-limp after their torture by stangury-style orgasm in the skeletal embrace of blue-pied Sister Pain.

Memory of that terrible triggering made him wonder for a moment if he were not simply gazing into another room in the apartments of Hisvet in Lankhmar Below, perhaps that of her sorcerer-father Hisvin, with Foursie due to burst in naked the next moment chattering out her demon alarm—and the dread blue lady once again centipede-walk her bone hand round his waist from behind as he lay trapped and confined by dirt.

But, no! The very earth that clasped him so intimately had changed profoundly in texture and in reek. The rocks from which nature had ground it had been igneous and metamorphic rather than sedimentary, he could tell. The moisture in it was not Salt Marsh and Hlal-mouth brackish, but had the icy bite of the mineralized streams rivuleting from the mountains of Hunger, a thousand Lankhmar leagues to the south of that metropolis. The commingled effluvia were not those of polyglot Lankhmar but of some more intense and secret community with a pervading mushroom odor. Toadstool wine!

A second contemplation of the new buried room and its occupants made much clear. However had he for a moment confused schoolmasterish, peevish Hisvin with this imperious figure discoursing to the crafty-looking lad who stood before him—the beaky nose, the wattled cheeks, the proud hawklike visage, but above all the ruby-red eyeballs with white irises and glittering jet pupils—those last alone should have told him (but for lingerings of his torture-wrought amnesia) that this could be none other than Quarmal, Lord of Quarmall, on numerous counts his and friend Fafhrd's dearest enemy.

As soon as this realization struck him he noted other clues to the scene's identity and locale, such as a curtain of dangling cords bellowing inward at the room's far end, and behind that, dimly glimpsed, a thick-thighed, short-armed human monster walking without moving forward—one of the almost mindless slaves specially bred to work the treadmills that spun the great wooden fans that sucked down air into the many ramp-joined levels of the buried city and its low-ceilinged mushroom fields.

Unquestionably he was half again as far from Rime Isle as he'd been when overtaken by Sister Pain while spying on Hisvet's remedy for boredom on tedious afternoons in Lankhmar Below, the distance demi-doubled—a prodigious feat of subterranean transversing, one must admit. Unless, of course, both experiences were incidents in a lengthy nightmare dreamed while shallowly buried on Gallows Hill—which more and more seemed the explanation of choice for all this underground hugger-mugger, provided he were eventually rescued from it, to be sure.

Coming out of this reverie, the Mouser checked that his shallow breathing of earth-trapped air was still unlabored and then scanned anew the long room lined with books and charts and philosophic instruments. How characteristic of most of his life, he told himself, was his present situation! To be on the outside in drenching rain or blasting snow or (like now) worse and looking in at a cozy abode of culture, comfort, companionship, and couth—what man wouldn't turn to thieving and burglary when faced at every turn with such a fate?

But back to the business at hand, he told himself, resuming his scanning of the spacious room with its two-and-one-half occupants (the half being for the monstrous treadslave, laboring behind the wavy curtain of cords at the far end).

The soundlessly lecturing Lord Quarmal perched on a high stool beside a narrow table, and the attentive lad (whose dutiful answers or replies were likewise inaudible) were like a study in old and young skinniness ... and wariness, to judge by their expressions. He also noted a family resemblance in their features although the lad's eyes had no sign of the old man's ruby-red balls and white irises, while the latter's long-hair tufts between his shriveled ears and bald pate had no greenish cast such as that shown by the other's short-cropped locks.

What were they being cagey about? he asked himself. Damn it, why was this talk blocked off? Recalling he'd had the same trouble hearing Hisvet and Company at first, he focused his attention, (or, rather, the occult auditory) in one effort to make it come through to him as clearly as the visual did.

Failing to achieve any results, he decided shortly he must be pressing. He relaxed his concentration and let his mind drift. A gesture of Quarmal with the long thin stiff wand or rod he carried turned his attention to the big Nehwon map, the handsome craft of which tempted the Mouser to scan it almost idly for a while. The colors were mostly naturalistic, with blues representing seas and lakes, yellow for deserts, white for snow and ice, and so forth. Close to the west edge, near the dark blue of the Outer Sea, Quarmall stood out in royal purple as clearly as if there'd been a sign reading “You are here."

Just north of it were several small white ovals—the peaks of the Mountains of Hunger. Then a great space of pale brown with the blue thread of the Hlal winding through it—the grainfields. Then Hlal-mouth with the city of Lankhmar on its east bank, and above those the paler blue expanse of the Inner Sea.

Next above that, the dark green Land of the Eight Cities ending in the white-topped wall of the Trollstep Mountains and, everywhere north of that, the white of the Cold Waste. And, off in the Outer Sea deep blue of the top-west corner, something he'd never seen on a map before, Rime Isle. It looked very small. The Mouser shivered to see depicted the distance between his home port and Quarmall. This had all better be a nightmare dream, he told himself.

His gaze next traveling east beyond the Cold Waste, it came to the Sea of Monsters and, beyond that, another shiversome first in his experience of charts: an elliptical black blotch with a glowing sapphire blue spot at its center that had to be the Shadowland, Abode of Death. Why, in the Empire of the East it meant execution by torture for a cartographer to limn that land.

Scattered across the map, but mostly near cities, were enigmatic glowing small purple dots, along with a lesser number of gleaming red ones, as though it had been generously arrayed with amethyst-headed pins, sparsely with ruby ones. What might they signify? The Mouser frowningly noted that one of the reds marked Rime Isle at its Salthaven corner.

At this point the Gray One became aware he had been hearing for some time a faint but steady whispering roar, like that of an array of monster seashells, and realized that it was the hollow noise of the treadslave-driven fans that kept Quarmall from suffocating. It was more than ten years since he'd been employed here bodyguarding Prince Gwaay and heard that sound, but once one heard it, one didn't forget.

Then he began to get strange hissing modulations of the soft roar corresponding with the more vigorous shapings of old Quarmal's lips. They were like the sinister whispers of vindictive ghosts. The Mouser felt a thrill of accomplishment when he provisionally identified the language as High Quarmallese and a surge of triumph when he caught the first indisputable phrase in that sibilant tongue, “treasure caravans of Kush,” while Quarmal ticked off with his long rod on the map that jungle kingdom far south of the buried city he himself ruled. Next thing the Mouser knew, he was hearing the entire dialogue with perfect clarity and comprehension. It seemed like a miracle, a wondrous witchcraft, despite his high opinions of his own linguistic skills.

Quarmal: While it is true, dearest Igwarl, son of my loins and heir of my caverns, that the taking of revenge on injurers and traducers of Quarmall is the chiefest duty of a Lord of Quarmall, it must never be achieved at risk of breaching Quarmall's secrecy. That is why the purple points on the map representing our spies and hidden allies are many more than the crimson ones, marking our assassins.

Igwarl: So the brave wielders of the knife, revered parent, must always be outnumbered by the softspeakers and doubledealers?

Quarmal: Not many of my assassins employ the knife. Some steal away priceless life by poisons sweet as sleep or lulling deathspells fair as a dream of love.

Igwarl: Why must things never be done forthrightly, as in war!

Quarmal: Ah, the impetuosity of youth. Quarmall tried war and lost, now works a surer way. Let me pose you a question. Whom may a Prince of Quarmall trust in furthering his designs?

Igwarl: You, sire. Not my mother. A brother, never! But he may trust his playmate concubines, if they be sisters and he has had the training and command of them.

From his close-buried coign of vantage the Mouser saw the in-blown cords part as a naked girl entered the long chamber past the toiling treadslave. She was of Igwarl's age, looked his wiry double, had the same greenish-blond hair close-cropped, and bore before her like a sword at thrust a slender two-edged knife as she advanced inexorably upon the unperceiving boy. She moved rhythmically yet with a limp, favoring her left foot. The expression on her face was that of a sleepwalker-blank, serene.

Quarmal: What of a sister? Issa, say. She's to be trusted?

Igwarl: Better than lesser playmate concubine—since she has been like trained even more carefully.

Quarmal: I am glad to hear so. Look behind you.

Igwarl turned. And froze.

Quarmal let him come to full realization of his plight. The old man's eyes were as intent as those of a leopard. He held the rod ready in his right hand. He shook his left hand free from its sleeve and poised it at head level a foot from his face.

The girl reached striking distance.

Swift as a snake, Igwarl drew a dagger from his belt.

His aged parent rapped his knuckles with the rod and the weapon clattered on the rock floor.

This second betrayal rendered Igwarl moveless.

Quarmal snapped the fingers of his left hand thrice with measured rapidity, slipping his spatulate middle finger off his thumb and bringing it down precisely upon the crevice between his ring finger and his thumb's root with a crack loud as that of a carter's whip. And again. And yet again.

At the first crack the girl halted her forward movement with her knife a handsbreadth short of Igwarl's belly and her eyes widened.

At the second crack realization grew in them of the enormity of the deed she had attempted. She paled.

At the third crack their pupils rolled upward and they fluttered shut as self-horrified unconsciousness enwrapped her. The knife slipped from her fingers and dashed on the rock floor. She swayed forward. Quarmal's rod darted past the bemused boy's shoulder and its brass ferrule took her a handsbreadth below a point midway between the nipplets of her budding breasts. She winced shut-eyed and went a shade paler.

“Catch Issa ere she falls,” Quarmal directed his son. To his credit Igwarl managed to comply swiftly enough, supporting her supine slim form with one arm beneath her shoulders, the other under her thighs.

“Dispose her here,” said Quarmal, indicating the narrow table. Igwarl did that too. The ability to act in crisis with a certain precision and a minimum of fuss seemed to run in the family, it occurred to the Mouser.

Quarmal: You were not expecting an instructive demonstration. (Quarmal pointed this out matter-of-factly, almost casually.) Ensconced in our cavern world, you were not on guard against assault. A sister, no matter how well trained, is not to be fully trusted if there are those can undercut your training. To teach you a lesson I entranced Issa to attack you without her conscious knowledge, then countermanded her before the end.

Igwarl: Your sinister fingers’ treble snap? (Old Quarmal nodded.) What if the countermand had failed to work?

Quarmal: You saw the celerity and sureness with which I used this rod, both to stay Issa's fall and prevent you from shortening your lesson and wasting one of Quarmall's more promising female servants.

Igwarl: But what if the rod had failed also?

Quarmal: Why, there are always more where you came from, youngster. Do you suppose a father who for Quarmall's good would let your gifted elder brothers kill each other, would spare you in like circumstance? Besides, my demonstration was designed to teach you not to trust me overmuch.

Igwarl: You have proven your point, devious parent.

Quarmal: (lifting Issa's left foot to display angry red circles upon heel and toe) And why this damage and disfigurement to Quarmall's precious property?

Igwarl: (sulkily) It was needful to correct. Those are not regions normally seen, contributing to beauty.

Quarmal: A limp's a beauty mark? There was the instep to be considered, not to mention the armpits.

Igwarl: I bow to your superior wisdom, sire. Impart to me the skill of enchantment.

Quarmal: All in good time, my son. I must reassure Issa.

The old man tweaked her left breast sharply, bringing her awake with a gasp. But when he would have spoken to her, his red eyes lifted away and went distant. His right hand fixed on Igwarl's shoulder and bore down. The boy grimaced with the pain.

“A hostile force is in the rocks surrounding us,” the old man hissed. “It came on whilst I was rapt instructing you."

His two children, looking up, quaked at what they saw in his ruby orbs.

In his grainy retreat the Mouser was aware of the intrusion. The pressure of the earth around him on his body increased, reached a breath-stopping maximum, then slackened off till he felt almost free to shoot off at the speed of light and reach the ends of Nehwon in a trice, then began to tighten up again. It happened over and over in a vast chthonian pulse, as though a giant were pacing overhead.

In his spell-casting map room and library, red-orbed old Quarmal found words. “It's my old enemy of twelve years back, Gwaay's champion, that cutpurse of empires and spoiler of dominions, the Gray Mouser. He's somehow learned of my plot against his pal and (mayhap with aid from his wizards Sheelba and Ningauble) come to spy upon me. Loose the boreworms and poison moles against him! The rock-tunneling spiders and the acid slugs that eat through stone!"

These dire threats, clearly heard by the Mouser and half believed, were too much. When the next surge of tremendous pressure came together with the dizzy pulse of freedom, he blacked out.

Since Pshawri's self-rule was to do the necessary with least effort, he laid no plans, looking to find inspiration and allies in the developing situation. So when he surmounted Darkfire's crater rim and felt the full force of the north blast, having climbed her by her moonlit east face, he anticipated nothing.

The first thing his eyes lit on was a black rock the size and shape of a narrow man-skull. He reached forward crouching and budged it. Instead of being foamed or clear wave volcanic rock, it was something far heavier, leadstone at least—which explained its being free yet staying where it was in the gale.

Bracing himself, he scanned around the cloud-streaked night, again sensing menace to the southwest—something on tall invisible legs or shouldering down out of the sullied moonshine.

He advanced three paces and peered down into the volcano's narrow-throated fire pit.

The tiny rose-red lake of molten lava flooring it looked very far down and startlingly still, yet on his windchilled cheeks and chin he felt the prick of its radiant heat.

His hands shot toward the pouch between his legs so he might take from it the strange talisman of the foreign god who was his captain-father's foe and hurl it down before hostile night could gather its powers.

But the next instant, as if it had read his mind, the small massy Whirlpool Queller came alive and dashed back and forth, this way and that, seeking escape, outdinting the pouch confining it, drubbing him about the thighs and genitals, inflicting jolts of sickening pain.

His actions shaped themselves without pause to this supernatural flurry. His horny hands closed on the dodging Queller in its bag. He turned around, lunged to the leadstone skull-rock, and pressed tightly against it the encindered and empouched (and certainly ensorcelled!) gold talisman. It shook strongly. He was glad it had no teeth. He felt night's awfulest powers looming over him.

He did not look up. Keeping the vibrating Queller confined against the leadstone with left hand and knee, he used his right to draw his dirk and cut the straps by which his pouch hung from his belt. Then, holding his dirk in his teeth by its cork-covered grip, he used the coil of thin climbing line hanging at his side to bind together firmly the skull-rock and the tight-woven wool pouch along with its frantic contents—with many a thoughtful look and hardest knots.

While concentrating on this job with blind automatism, steadily resisting the urge to look over his shoulder, his mind roved. He recalled what his co-mate Mikkidu had told him about how Captain Mouser had had them double the lashing of the deck cargo of Seahawk so that the galley retained its integrity and buoyancy when foundered by leviathan dive beside it, and how he'd lectured them on a man's need to bind securely all his possessions to be sure of them, and how he was guessed to have treated the same a beauteous slim she-demon who had sought to enthrall him and secure the ship.

Next came the memory of a tranquil twilight hour when the day's work ashore was done and Captain Mouser, wine cup in hand and in a rare mood of philosophizing familiarity, confided, “I distrust all serious thought, reasoned analysis, and such. When faced with difficulties, it is my practice to dive but once, deeply, into the pool of the problem, with supreme confidence in my ability to pluck up the answer."

That had been before Freg's letter had transformed his captain and mentor into his hero and sire—and set him seeking special ways to prove himself. And in so seeking he'd loosed, poor fool, his father's fellest foe.

Where was his father now?

And could he now recoup?

His task was done, the last loop drawn tight, the last knot tied, bag firmly lashed to stone. Again, without one instant's hesitation, he tightly gripped the weighty package in both hands, turned, took two steps into the icy gale and toward the pit, lifted it to its apex, and then very suddenly (and with the feeling that if he took one moment more, something very big above him would snatch it from him) hurled it straight down at the rosy-red target.

He ended in a low crouch on the rim, which he immediately gripped, shooting his legs back so that he lay flat—prone with his face thrust over, peering down. And it was well that he effected this additional descent for he was smitten by a chill gust from above which else had knocked him after his projectile—and crosswise brushed by a huge wing which would have done the same had he been inches higher.

He kept his eye upon the black grain of the plummeting skull-rock package. From it two tiny, whitely incandescent eyes glared up at him. One of them winked. He saw the grain enter the molten pool, from which a single like-sized red drop rebounded, whereupon the whole small lake ‘gan to seethe and shake and churn and coruscate, its level crawling upward, as if a dam had burst. The speed of this ascent of the lava pool ‘gan to increase as he watched. The crawl became a scramble, then a rush. And what did this portend? Had he saved the Gray Mouser? Or doomed him?—if there were connection between man and talisman.

A blast of hot air traveling ahead of the upgushing lava near seared his slitted eyes. Without pause, groping thought gave way to arrow-swift action. Escape was the one word or he'd not live to think. Pushing himself to his feet and twisting around, he began a skipping moonlit descent of the black cone he'd but now laboriously climbed. Perilous to the point of madness and beyond, yet utterly necessary were he to live to tell.

His eyes were fully occupied spotting the landing points of the successive leaps toward which he steered his feet. The moonlight turned bright pink. There was a giant hissing. He smelled sulfur and brimstone. There was a mighty roar, as if a cosmic lion had coughed, and a hot gust clapped his back heartily, turning three of his leaps into one, speeding his flight. Red missiles flashed past him and burst on impact to either side his course ahead of him like angry stars. The steep slope gentled. His leaps became a lope. The leonine coughing re-echoed like thunder rolling away. The pink moonshine paled and darkened.

At last he risked a backward look, expecting scenes of destruction, but there was only a great wall of sooty darkness that reeked of acid smoke and billowed overhead to besprinkle Skama with black.

He shrugged. For good or ill, his work was done and he was headed south on the front of a second monstrous weather change.

Fingers knew she was dreaming because there was a rainbow in the cave. But that was all right because the six colors were more like those of pastel chalk than light and there was a blackboard at which she was being taught to pleasure Ilthmar sailor-men by her mother and an old, old man, both wearing long black robes and hoods which hid their upper faces.

For teaching, her mother bore her witch's wand and the old man a long silver spoon with which he managed the cleverest demonstrations.

But then, perhaps to illustrate some virtue—persistence?—he began to tap the bowl of his spoon on the hollow top of the desk at which they all three sat. He beat softly with a slow funeral rhythm that fascinated her until that doleful sound was all that was left in the world.

She woke to hear water a-drip, in the same slow beat as the dream-spoon, upon the thin horn pane of a slanting roof window close overhead.

She realized she had grown warm and thrown back her blanket, and as she listened to the drip she thought, The frosty spell has broken. It's the thaw.

From the pillow beside her, Gale, who'd also thrown back her bedclothes, murmured urgently in exactly the same rhythm as the water drops: "Faf-hrd, Faf-hrd, Un-cle Fafhrd."

Which told Fingers that the drops were a message from the engaging red-haired captain, boding his return. And she told herself that she had a closer relationship to him than Gale's or even Afreyt's and must bestir herself and venture out and assure his safe return.

This decision once made, she wormed her way off the bed—it seemed important to make no stir—and drew on her short robe and soft fur boots.

After a moment's study and thought, she dropped the thin sheet back across Gale's frowsy supine sprawl and stole from the room.

Passing the bedroom where Cif and Afreyt lodged, she heard sounds of someone rising and turned down the stairs, tiptoeing next the wall to avoid the treads creaking.

Arriving in the banked warmth of the dark kitchen, she smelled gahvey heating and heard footsteps above and behind her. Without haste she made her way to the door of the bath and concealed herself behind Fafhrd's robe of coarse toweling hanging beside it, in such a way as to be able to observe without herself being seen, she trusted.

It was Cif descended the stairs, dressed for the day's work. The short woman threw wide the outer door and the sounds of the thaw came in and the low white beams of the setting moon. Standing in them, she set to her lips a thin whistle and blew—without audible results, but Fingers judged a signal had been sent.

Then Cif went to the banked fire, poured herself a mug of gahvey and took it back to the doorway where she sipped and waited. For a while she gazed straight at Fingers. But if Cif saw the girl, the woman made no sign.

With a jingle of bells but no other sound, a dogcart and pair drew up beyond her—without driver, so far as Fingers could see.

Cif walked out to it, stepped aboard, took the whip from its vertical socket and, sitting very erect, cracked it once high in the air.

Fingers came out from behind Fafhrd's robe and hurried to the door in time to see Cif and her small vehicle moving west beneath the barely diminished descending disk of Satyrs Moon as the two big dogs bore them off toward the spot where they sought Captain Mouser. For a long moment Fingers enjoyed the feeling of being a member of this household of silently occupied witchwomen.

But then the drip of the thaw reminded her of her own quest. She fetched Fafhrd's robe from its peg, and hanging it over her left arm and leaving the house door open behind her, as Cif had, Fingers circled the dwelling and headed out across the open field toward the sea, treading the steaming grass and feeling the caress of the soft south wind that set its seal on the great change of weather.

The moon was directly behind her now. She walked straight up the long shadow of herself it cast, which stretched to the low moondial. Overhead the brighter stars could be discerned, though dimmed by their moon mistress. To the southeast a cloud bank was rising to cover them.

As Fingers watched, a slender single cloud separated itself from the bank and headed toward her. It came coasting down out of the night sky, moving a little faster than the balmy breeze which drove on its fellows and lightly stroked her. The last of the moonlight shone brightly on its swan-rounded prow and sleek straight sides—for it truly did look more like a delicate ship of the air than any proper cloud of aqueous vapor should, so that a spider-webbing shiver of wonder and gossamer fear went along Fingers's rosy flesh beneath her belted robe and she crouched a little and went more softly.

She was nearing the moondial now, passing it just to the south. Where its curving gnomon did not shadow it, its moon-pale round crawled with Rimic runes and half-familiar figures.

Beyond the dial, a bare spearcast distant, the eerie ship-cloud came coasting down, moving in a direction opposite to the girl, and settled to a stop.

At the same instant, almost as if it were part of the same movement, Fingers spread Fafhrd's robe across the wet grass ahead of her and gently stretched herself out upon it so that the moondial's low curb was sufficient to conceal her. She held still, intently studying the strange cloud's pale hull.

The last bright splinter of Satyrs Moon vanished behind Rime Isle's central peaks. At the opposite end of the sky the dawn glow grew.

From a direction midway between out of the cloud ship there came the doleful music of a flute and small drum sounding a funeral march.

Simultaneously and silently there thrust down out of the heart of the cloud and touched down a third of the distance between it and Fingers a light gangplank which appeared broad enough for two to go abreast.

Then down this travelway as the dawn lightened and the music swelled there came slowly and solemnly a small procession headed by two slim girls in garments of close-fitting black, like pages, and bearing the flute and small drum from which the sad notes came.

Following these there came two by two and footing with a grave dignity six slender women in the black hoods and formfitting robes of the nuns of Lankhmar whose plackets showed the pastel tints of underthings of violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.

Upon their shoulders they bore with ease and great solicitude a black-draped, wide-shouldered, slender-hipped tall male form.

Following these there strolled a final slim, tall, black-clad female figure in brimless conical hat and veils of a priestess of the Gods of Lankhmar. She bore a long wand tipped with a tiny, glowing pentagram, with which she sketched an endless row of hieroglyphs upon the twilit air.

Fingers, watching the strange funeral from her hidden point of vantage, could not name their language.

As the procession debouched upon the meadow, it swung west. When the turn had been fully completed, the figure of the priestess lifted her wand in a gesture of command, bringing the dim star to a stop. Instantly the girl-pages stopped their playing, the nuns their dancing forward march, and Fingers felt herself seized by a paralysis that rendered her incapable of speech and froze her every muscle save those controlling the direction in which she looked.

In a concerted movement the nuns lifted the corpse they carried on high, brought it down to the grass with an uncomfortable swiftness, and then twitched aloft the empty shroud.

The point where they had deposited the corpse was just out of Fingers's range of vision, but there was nothing the girl could do about that except grow cold and shiver.

Nor did it help when the priestess lowered her wand.

One by one the nuns knelt with hands out of view and performed a not overlong manipulation, then each dipped her head briefly out of sight and finally all rose together.

One by one the six nuns did this thing.

The priestess touched the last nun's shoulder with her wand to attract her attention and handed her a white silken ribbon. The latter knelt, and when she rose no longer had the ribbon in her hand.

With more speed than solemnity, the priestess once again raised her star-tipped wand, the page-girls struck up a jolly quick-step, the nuns briskly folded the shroud they'd borne so solemnly, the whole procession about-faced and quick-marched back aboard the cloud ship no less swiftly than it takes to write it down, and the crew set sail.

And still Fingers could not move one.

In the interval the sky had brightened markedly, sunrise was close at hand, and as the cloud-ship sailed away west at a surprisingly fast rate, it and its crew, momentarily less substantial, were suddenly on the verge of fading out, while the music gave way to a ripple of affectionate laughter.

Fingers felt all constraints lift from her muscles. She darted forward, and the next moment, it seemed, was looking down into the very shallow depression wherein the dancing nuns had laid their mortal burden.

There on a bed of new-sprung milky mushrooms stretched out serenely the tall, handsome, faintly smiling form of the man she knew as Captain Fafhrd and toward whom she felt such a puzzling mixture of feelings. He was doubly naked because recently close-shaven everywhere, save for eyebrows and lashes, and those trimmed short, and quite unclad except for ribbons of the six spectral colors and white tied in big bows around his limp genital member.

“Keepsakes of his six lady loves who were his pallbearers, or dancers, and from their mistress or chieftainess,” the girl pronounced wisely.

And noting the organ's extreme flaccidity and the depth of satisfaction in his smile, she added with professional approval, “And loved most thoroughly."

At first she felt a strong pang of grief, thinking him dead, but a closer look showed his chest to be gently rising and falling, and also brought her within range of his warm exhalation.

She prodded him gently in the chest over his breastbone, saying, “Wake up, Captain Fafhrd."

The warmth of his skin surprised her, though not enough to make her think of fever.

The smoothness of his skin truly startled her. It was shaved more closely than she'd thought possible, with sharpest eastern steel. Bending down just as the new-risen sun sent out a wave of brightness, she could see only the faintest copper-pink flecks as of fresh-scoured metal. Yesterday she'd noticed gray and white hairs among the red. He'd merited Gale's “Uncle” fully. But now—the effect was of rejuvenation, the skin looked babyish, fair as hers was. He continued to smile in his sleep.

Fingers gripped him firmly by the shoulders and shook him.

“Wake up, Captain Fafhrd,” she cried. “Arise and shine!” Then, in an impish mood, irked by this smile, which now began to seem merely foolish and stupid, “Cabin-girl Fingers reporting for duty."

She knew that was wrong as soon as she heard herself utter it, when in response to her shaking he reared up into a sitting position, though without opening his eyes or changing expression. Suddenly these things became frightening.

To give herself time to think about the situation and consider what to do next, Fingers returned to fetch his robe from where she'd left it spread out on the wet grass back at the moondial. She doubted he'd want to be seen naked, and certainly not wearing his ladies’ colors. Yet the sun was up and at any moment Gale, Afreyt, or some visitor might appear.

“For although your ladies playing nuns had every right to mark you as their lover—seeing you'd been most free (I think) with all of them, that does not mean I have to go along with their naughty joke, though I do think it funny,” the girl said as she came hurrying with his robe, speaking aloud because she thought he really did still sleep and wanted in any case to check upon this fact.

In the interval she had jumped to the rather romantic conclusion that Fafhrd was in the situation of the Handsome Tranced One, a male equivalent of Sleeping Beauty in Lankhmar legend—a youth with a sleep spell on him that can be lifted only by his true love's kiss.

Which at once suggested to Fingers that she convey the sleeping (and strangely transformed, even frightening) hero to the Lady Afreyt for the reviving kiss.

After all, they had been introduced to her as lovers (and proper gentlefolk) except for Fafhrd's straying with the naughty nuns, which was the sort of straying to be expected of men, according to her mother's teaching. Moreover he'd been under all the strain of directing the search for his comrade Captain who'd slipped underground.

Surely to bring Fafhrd and Afreyt back together would be a most proper return for all the courtesies they'd shown her, beginning with her rescue from Weasel.

Back at the mushroom bed Fafhrd had made no further progress toward awakening. So she draped the sun-warmed robe around him, gently urging him by words and assisting movements to don it.

“Arise, Captain Fafhrd,” she suggested, “and I will help you into your robe and then to some shadowed and comfortable spot where you may have your full sleep out."

When with some repetitions of this routine and patter she'd got him up (safely asleep on his feet, as it were) with his robe belted about him so his colorful honors were completely concealed—and a long look around showed they were still unobserved—she breathed a sigh of relief and set about to lead him back to Cif's house using the same methods.

But they'd got no farther than the moondial when it occurred to Fingers to ask herself, Where's everyone?

It was a question easier to ask than answer.

You'd think after the second great weather change, every last soul would be out to see, soaking in the heat and talking about the wonder.

Yet wherever you looked there wasn't a person to be seen or heard. It was eerie.

All yesterday the digging for Captain Mouser had kept up a steady traffic between the diggings, the barracks, and Cif's place. Today no trace of that since Cif's departure by moonlight hours ago.

It was as if Fafhrd's sleep spell were on everyone in Salthaven save herself. Maybe it was.

And the somnambulistic spell on Fafhrd was a lot stronger than she'd judged at first. Here, he and she were halfway back to Cif's and it showed no signs of falling off.

She began to doubt the power of Afreyt's kiss to dispel it. Perhaps it would be better if he had his full sleep out, as she'd been suggesting to him in her patter.

And what if Afreyt didn't go for her idea of the Handsome Tranced One and the revivifying kiss? Or tried it and it didn't? And then they both tried to wake Fafhrd and couldn't? And Lady Afreyt blamed her for that?

Suddenly she lost all faith in the ideas that had seemed so brilliant to her moments before. Getting Fafhrd back to full sleep again (as she had been promising him over and over in her patter) as soon as they'd reached a suitable place for that seemed the thing to do. She recalled an infallible sleep spell her mother had taught her. The sooner she recited it to Fafhrd, the better. Fully asleep again, he'd no longer be her responsibility.

Perhaps it would work on her too—and perhaps that was just what she needed to straighten her out—a good sleep.

The idea of falling asleep with Captain Fafhrd seemed vastly attractive.

They'd just got back to Cif's without encountering anyone. She was relieved to find the door ajar. She thought she'd closed it.

Stopping her soft talk to Fafhrd, but keeping up a pressure on his arm, she worked the thick door open and guided him inside. The house was silent, she was pleased to find, and Captain Fafhrd, being barefoot, made no more noise than she.

Then, as they were halfway across the kitchen, nearer the cellar stairs than those to the second floor (or the sauna door), she heard footsteps overhead in Cif's bedroom. Afreyt's, she thought.

She decided at once on flight and chose the cellar because it was nearest and also the place where she had first met Fafhrd. She stuck with her choice because the Northerner responded instantly to her silent guidance, as if it would have been his choice too.

And then they were down in the cellar and the die was cast—simply a matter of whether the firm, decisive footsteps of Afreyt followed him down into the cellar or did not. Fingers had led him out of the space at the foot of the stairs visible from the kitchen and sat him down on the bench facing the large square of unpaved loamy earth, illuminated, she now saw, by one of the long-lasting cool leviathan-oil lamps. But she dared not turn that off now, no matter how unsuitable for sleeping, for if Afreyt saw the light dim in the cellar, she'd surely come down to investigate.

The footsteps finished the upper stairs, came five paces across the kitchen, and then stopped dead. Had she noticed the light on in the cellar and would she come down to turn it off?

But moments gave way to seconds and seconds to minutes, or at least lengthened unendurably, and still there'd been no sound. It was as if Afreyt had died up there or just evaporated. Until Fingers, to stop herself growing tired or numb and getting a crick in her neck or shoulder and making a violent involuntary move, edged forward step by silent step and seated herself on the bench beside the northern Captain, facing away from the unpaved square of earth.

She felt herself growing more and more tired, forgot about Afreyt hearing, and hastened to recite the sleep spell softly so that she and Captain Fafhrd would receive the full benefit of it.

Meanwhile something very interesting and quite unsuspected by Fingers had actually been happening to Afreyt.

She had wakened alone just before dawn and heard the thaw, opened the window overlooking the headland and moondial just in time to observe the wondrous sailing of the Arilian moon pinnace with Fafhrd's mistress and her naughty train, and heard the last notes of the quick march give way to the ripple of derisive laughter.

Thereafter, Afreyt had watched from the distance the tricksy and ambitious cabin-girl Fingers seemingly rouse, then robe her magically rejuvenated father (for the woman had noted many other resemblances between parent and offspring besides hair color), and then work their way at leisure back to Cif's place, getting their two stories straight, thought Afreyt, but above all murmuring of their great incestuous love (for after all, what else did they really have to talk about?), and while Fafhrd's lady was thus reacting to their manifold treacheries, she furiously laced on her shoes and belted her robe and hurried downstairs to confront the miscreants.

When she found them gone, Afreyt made the deduction Fingers had anticipated about the cellar light. She thought for a moment, then to surprise them, knelt and silently undid the shoes she had so furiously laced, stepped out of them and tiptoed downstairs without a sound.

But when she stepped out suddenly into full view she found them both faced away from her on the bench, gazing at the unpaved square of earth, Fafhrd resting his head against Fingers's chest, “lying in her lap,” as it's expressed, just as the girl started to recite in a small bell-like voice what she thought was her mother's sleep spell but was in truth, as she had inadvertently revealed to Gale and Afreyt the second morning of the cold by reciting its last five individually harmless lines, the direst of Quarmallian death spells taught her under hypnosis by the infinitely vengeful and devious Lord Quarmal of Quarmall.

"Call for the robin red breast and the wren
Since o'er shady groves they hover
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole
The ant, the field mouse, and the mole
To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm
And safe from any savage hurt or harm..."

As Afreyt heard Fingers recite the first of those eight lines, she saw emerge vertically upward from the soft earth of the left forefront of the unpaved square a small serpent's head or tentacle tip, followed almost at once close to either side by a second and third at the same even rate, then a short fourth in line at the same short distance to the left, and lastly a thick fifth erecting alone two inches in front of the rest, and then she saw that the four serpents’ heads or tentacles were joined at their bases to a palm, and taken with the thick separate member, constituted the fingers and thumb of a buried hand digging itself upward and bursting from the ground, while down off it the revealing earth sifted and tumbled.

As Afreyt, all a-shiver at this prodigy, listened to the recitation of the innocuous-seeming second and third lines and realized that the situation must be different, with Fafhrd playing a more passive role than she'd suspected, a second and larger emergence started, that of a head behind and to the right of the hand and with its hairy earth-mired crown beginning at the level of the palm.

The forward-facing brow, as it emerged at the same even rate as had the hand, showed more bright yellow in its illumination than white leviathan light would account for, which reminded Afreyt of Cif's dream of the Mouser wearing a glowing yellow mask and was Afreyt's first clue to the identity of the underground traveler. By now it was apparent that the escaping hand was attached to and directed by the rising head, and Afreyt, shaking with terror at the unnatural sight, at least need not fear the dartings, scuttlings, and gropings of a hostile, detached, and independently roving hand.

As she heard the child's clear little voice recite the somewhat sinister fourth line of the Quarmallian death spell, which Afreyt already suspected to be something of the sort (which Fingers did not as yet), the eyes beneath the rising brow came into view and opened wide.

Afreyt at once recognized the gray eyes of the Mouser, saw that they were fixed upon Fafhrd and full of fear for him and that it was the very fear of death. At that moment she would have given a great deal to know whether Fafhrd's own eyes were open or closed, if the Mouser had made his deduction from the expression in them or from his comrade's extreme pallor or other physical symptom. She did not think (at least as yet) of getting up and looking for herself—her awe of what was happening, rather than her fear (though that was great) kept her frozen.

As a matter of fact his eyes were closed with the spell's workings, which operated by degrees, line by line, from sleep to death.

Fingers, reciting the death spell Quarmal had taught her hypnotically after her kidnapping and which she now thought of as a sleep spell of her mother's (as he'd told her ‘twas) saw the same figure emerging from the earth that Afreyt did, but it did not catch her interest. She hoped it would not interfere with her recital of the spell and its working on Fafhrd and herself. Perhaps it was the beginning of a dream they'd share.

The Mouser had last lost consciousness underground spying on old Quarmal's buried map room and chamber of necromancy while asking himself questions about Rime Isle.

He came to awareness now with head, shoulders, and one arm emerged into a familiar cellar on the latter island and with the answers to his questions in plain view: Fafhrd dying in the arms and against the breasts of his daughter by (the Quarmallian) slave girl Friska, and the child's unwitting recitation of the death spell.

Who else could be the assassin indicated by the lone red dot on Quarmal's world map? And so what Mouser must do at once to save his dearest friend from life's worst ill—even before Mou inhaled the unrationed breaths he longed to, stretched the cramped muscles, or tasted the wine for which his dry throat cried—was to countermand that death spell by snapping his fingers thrice as he'd just now seen Quarmal do to stay the instructional assassination of his son Igwarl by the latter's sister Issa.

And, if Mou knew anything about the rules of magic and the ways of Quarmal, those snaps must be perfectly executed, delivered without delay, and loud as thundercracks—or else he could go whistle for Faf's life forevermore.

And so it happened that as Afreyt listened to Fingers recite the idyllic fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth lines of the spell (but getting closer to the nasty ones she'd “spelled” to them in her fatigue the second morning of the cold), the Rime Isle woman was puzzled and nonplused to see the earth-traveler—just as there rose into view Mouser's mouth set in a narrow slit for air scavenging—wave his limply held free hand vigorously, as if it were a dusting rag from which he shook the dirt, and then carefully settle the pad at end of his middle finger against the ball of his thumb above ring and little finger bent back against the palm, and against which the poised and powerfully tensed middle finger now flashed down.

It was, quite simply, the loudest fingersnap she'd ever heard. So might a most impatient god summon a reprehensibly straying angel.

And as if that prodigious snap were not enough to prove whatever point was being contested, it was followed with preternatural swiftness by not one, but two repetitions of the same sound, each one a little louder than the previous one, which as any knowledgeable gambler knows, is not a bet to be backed, an achievement to set a wager on.

The Mouser's fingerbolts had their desired effect on the others in the cellar, including their sender.

They brought Afreyt to her feet. Fingers was silenced, Quarmal's death spell canceled. The bell tones ceased to sound, the cabin-girl fell backward. Fafhrd collapsed, sank sidewise against her.

This should have made it easier for Afreyt to see the Mouser, but it didn't. The effort he'd put into his fingerbolts had taken it out of him. As if time had been turned back to that night of full Satyrs Moon on Gallows Hill, his outline grew fainter, the steady leviathan light flickered, his emergence slowed and stopped, without reaching his waist, and he began to slip backward into the earth.

His eyes fixed on Afreyt's most dolefully. His lips opened and a low moaning came out, such as a ghost utters at cockcrow, infinitely sad.

Afreyt plunged to her knees before the unpaved square. Her grasping digging hands encountered only loose dirt. She clambered to her feet and turned back to the fallen figures.

The man with the child's skin and the child lay as if dead. But a closer inspection showed them to be but sleeping.

Cif scraped the wooden scoop four times across the earthen tunnel face before her, detaching small chunks and granules of loosened sand, which pattered down on and around her boots.

The leviathan-oil lamp behind her cast her head's shadow on the fresh area of tunnel face thus uncovered and the newly attached snow-serpent hide (which was the twenty-third in from the shaft) puffed warm air upon it from outside, where Satyrs Moon was two hours set and the bright sun almost as long arisen.

She had been working at the tunnel face all of that time, advancing it at least two feet (and making room for another length of the flexible snowy piping, which had just now been attached).

With her free hand she felt, deep in her pouch, the reassuring touch of the brazen loop, wide enough to be a ring for two fingers, with which Mikkidu had greeted her this morn, telling her that it had been recovered during the digging last night and was (as she well knew) an item the Captain was seldom parted from.

She judged she had another hour of face work in her before she lost her freshness and must give place to Rill, who now assisted her and only had been below for half an hour.

But now ‘twas time for one of the quarter-hourly checks she made.

“Cover the lamp,” she called back to Rill.

The lady with the crippled left hand pulled up around the coolly burning lamp a thick black sack and drew it together at the top.

The tunnel grew black as pitch.

Cif stared ahead and this time seemed to see, floating at eye level, a phosphorescent yellow mask such as she'd seen the Mouser wearing in the dream she'd had the first night of the cold. It was dim but truly seemed there.

Letting fall the scoop and withdrawing her left hand from her pouch, she dug her gloved fingers into the sandy face where the mask was drifting. It stayed there, did not fade out or waver, but grew brighter. The featureless black ovals that were its eyes seemed to stare back at her commandingly.

“Uncover the lamp,” she managed to enunciate.

Rill obeyed, not trusting herself to ask questions. Almost with a rush the white light flooded back, revealing Cif staring fiercely at the tunnel face. Rill could no longer contain herself.

“You think...?” she managed to ask in a voice fraught with awe.

“We'll soon know,” the other replied, drawing back her clawed right hand and driving it into the loosened sand of the tunnel face at the level of her chin, twisting it this way and that, back and forth, feeling around before withdrawing it. (Small chunks and grains showered around.) She repeated this action twice, but on the second occasion paused with her hand still dug in.

Her gloved fingers had encountered and were now uncovering two hard, serrated, semicircular ridges with a half-inch gap between them.

Wetting her lips with her tongue and guiding them with her gloved hands held close beside her cheeks, she pressed them against the dry and gritty pair of lips that closely framed the serrated ridges that opposed and almost touched her own teeth.

Puffing a breath of air ahead of it, she ran her tongue's wet tip around the inside of the dry lips hers pressed, repeated that tender action and then inhaled.

Her nostrils and foremouth filled with the exciting acrid reek of the Gray Mouser, familiar to her from a long season's lovemaking.

It made her tremble and shake to realize this was so, that she held between her hands his precious face returned from the grave.

She exhaled to one side that wonder breath, drew in a fresh one from the serpent's mouth, again clamped her lips down upon his still-dry ones and gently blew that breath deep into him, praying it retained its healing serpent's character.

“Dearest, beloved,” she heard him croak.

She realized she was staring deep into his eyes, but was so close the two appeared as one.

“Owl eyes,” she replied foolishly, recalling their lovers’ name for that two-equals-one phenomenon.

Then recollecting more of her situation, she said, “Dear Rill, our captain's back. He's in my arms and I am feeding him air. Do you work in your hands from behind me and dig and brush the earth away from's body and speed his freeing from its dreadful grip."

“I will be very grateful, Rill, I assure you,” the Mouser broke in sotto voce, croaking rather less than he had on “dearest."

The witch-whore complied, gingerly at first, then with larger strokes as she realized the amount of earth there was to be moved. She found the scoop Cif had dropped and used it to increase the scope of first her right hand, then her crippled left, where the advantage it provided was greater.

Meanwhile Cif continued to brush dirt from his cheeks as she alternately kissed him and fed him air, working her hands nearer to the back of his head and a full embrace, with each stroke freeing more of the margins of his eye sockets and ears.

The Mouser said, “I'll keep my eyes closed, Cif, save when you tell me I may open them,” and was emboldened to ask, “And would you be a bit more generous with your perfumed saliva, dear? That is, if you've to spare. I've been without refreshment all of two days (or is it three, perchance?) save for such moisture as I've sucked from stones. Or begged from passing worms."

“I have,” Rill mentioned ingenuously. “I happen to have been chewing mint the past half hour. The smallest leaves."

“You are a witch, dear Rill,” Cif commented cattily.

Fafhrd's lieutenant Skor chose that moment to appear behind Rill, filling the tunnel with his stooped tall form and reporting past her to Cif as commander of the diggings, “The Captain's returned from wherever he was yesterday and last night, milady. I gather strange things have been happening, some in the sky. He just arrived by dogcart with the Lady Afreyt and with them the child Gale and the Ilthmar cabin-girl."

At that point he got a good look at what was going on in the tunnel, recognized the Mouser's face and became speechless. (Later he tried to describe what he saw to Skullick and Pshawri. “She was kissing him out of the sandstone, I tell you, kissing and caressing, working a mighty magic whether she knew it or not. While her sister witch worked a like sorcery upon his bottom half, his nether limbs and members. Our captains are fortunate to enjoy the favor of such women of power.")

Cif turned her head back toward him and straightened up, bringing the Mouser with her out of the tunnel face and shedding sandy debris.

“Things have been happening here too, as you can see,” she said briskly. “Now hearken, Skor. Return aloft and tell the Lady Afreyt and Captain Fafhrd I wish to speak with them down here. But do not tell them (or anyone up there) of Captain Mouser's passing strange return, else everyone will be crowding down to view and celebrate the wonder."

“That's true enough,” the tall man with thinning hair agreed, doing his best to sound rational.

“Do as she tells you, Skor,” the Mouser put in. “There's wisdom in her rede."

“Don't you return down here, of course,” Cif continued. “Take charge up there, maintain order, and keep the dragon breathing.” She nodded toward the pulsing white snow-serpent piping. “Here, take the ring of command off my top middle fingers and wear it on your thumb.” She held out the hand on which was Fafhrd's ring. He obeyed. She had an afterthought. “Send the two girls down also, Fingers and Gale. Else they'll make mischief while your hands are full."

“Hearkening in obedience,” Skor responded, bowing to Cif as he turned around and made off speedily.

“That last thought of yours was inspired, my dear,” the Mouser said breezily, turning from Rill to Cif. “Mischief? Yes, indeed!—for it turns out that the Ilthmar cabin-girl Fingers is the assassin sent to wipe out her father Fafhrd by reciting an outlandish death spell—sent out by our old enemy Quarmal, Lord of Quarmall, as I learned when I breakfasted there al fresco this morn's morn on cave dew, boreworm bread, and toadstool wine—and spied on Quarmal in his most secret lair."

“Fingers Fafhrd's get?” Rill remarked. “I suspected it from the red hair. And there's a definite facial resemblance. And something about her cool manner..."

The Mouser nodded emphatically. “Though, to be fair to Fingers, I don't think she knew what she was doing—old Quarmal had her most securely hypnotized. Fortunately I learned at the same time how to scotch his spells ('twas as easy as snap your fingers, and as hard) by observing him foil at the last moment his son Igwarl's murder by his sister Issa, which he had masterminded for purposes of instruction. (He makes a positive religion of treachery and mistrust, the old man does.) If I hadn't studied his finger-snapping trick and been able to repeat it perfectly, Fafhrd would be dead as mutton by his daughter's unknowing agency. Whereas, if we can trust Skor, he's as fit as a fiddle."

“My, my,” observed Cif, “we have managed to keep busy underground, haven't we?"

“You do know more about the worser side of human nature than any man I know. Or woman for that matter,” Rill chimed in.

The Mouser shrugged apologetically. The comic gesture caused him to really look at himself and his garments for the first time since coming out of the wall.

His reaction caused Cif and Rill to do the same thing.

His gray jerkin, which had been stout, thick cloth when last observed by any of them, had somehow grown fine as gossamer and quite translucent, while his exposed skin looked as if it had been pumiced.

As if on his journey underground he had endured for hours a blasting sandstorm, suffering such wear and tear as might be accounted for by a trip to Quarmall. The strangeness of it all gripped their minds.

At that long moment Fafhrd appeared in the tunnel, followed closely by Fingers and Afreyt, with a wide-eyed Gale bringing up the rear. He was wearing a winter jacket with attached hood fallen away behind, revealing his close-shaven pate.

“I knew you had been found,” he said excitedly. “I read it in Skor's face when he returned with Cif's summons. Though he's fooled the rest, I think. Make no mistake, it was a good idea to keep it a secret for a bit. There are things to be said before we face a celebration. It appears that I owe you my life, old friend—and my child her memory as well. Look here, you rogue, however did you learn old Quarmal's finger-snapping dodge?"

“Why, by traveling underground to his buried city, of course, and spying on him,” the Mouser replied airily. “And studying his maps,” he added. “Either I did that in the body or else my ka did in horn-gate dreams. If his boreworms got to me, and I believe they did, it argues for the former."

“Oh well,” Fafhrd said philosophically, “boreworms don't kill, only excruciate."

“And then only if you're awake while they're entering you,” Fingers piped up consolingly. “But truly, Uncle Mouser, I'm grateful to you beyond words for saving my father's life and me from parricide and madness."

“Tut, tut, child! No need for melodrama. I believe you,” the Mouser said, “and entreat your pardon for my earlier doubts. You are the daughter of your mother Friska, truly, who resisted all my efforts to seduce her, which were neither few nor unskillful, to my recollection."

“I believe you,” Fingers assured him. “As she's oft told me, your seduction attempts were responsible for her friend (and your lover, Uncle Mouser) Ivivis quitting the escape party at Tovilyis and persuading my mother to quit with her and have me there."

“I truly planned to get gold and return to Tovilyis and rejoin her,” Fafhrd apologized. “But something always intervened, generally the absence of gold."

“Friska never blamed you,” Fingers assured him. “She always came to your defense when Aunt Ivivis made you the target of one of her tirades. Aunty would say, ‘He should have stayed with you and let the little jackanapes go on alone,’ and Mother would answer, ‘That would have been too much to hope for. Remember, they're lifelong comrades.’”

“Friska was always most forgiving,” Fafhrd averred. “Just as Fingers is to you, Mouser,” he added, shaking his middle digit under the Gray One's nose. “Do you realize that that terrible treble fingersnap that saved my life almost slew Fingers at the same time? Stretching her senseless and unconscious across the bench where we'd sat watching you emerge from earth like a pale vengeful mole—was knocked out myself as well, stretched out across my daughter on the bench. As Afreyt here can attest, who was a full quarter hour eliciting from either of us the least sign of life."

“That's most true, masters,” the tall blonde averred, her violet eyes flashing. “I breathed for Fafhrd fully that long before his wits returned. Meanwhile Gale, who'd awakened and come downstairs fortuitously, performed a like service for Fingers."

“Yes, I did that,” the child confirmed, “and when you came to, you beast, you bit my nose, like an ungrateful and confused kitten."

“You should have spanked me,” the girl from Ilthmar told her piously.

“I'll remember that at the first opportunity,” Gale threatened darkly.

“For that matter, I lost consciousness myself completely at the climax,” the Mouser asserted, getting back into the game. “So much depended on getting those fingersnaps of old Quarmal just right, each one a little louder than the last. It literally took everything out of me, so that my task accomplished, I sank back into the earth like a dying ghost, to be transported here by whatever potent agency has guided my long journey, and await dear Cif's revivifying kiss."

And he slowly shook his head from side to side, raising his brows and parting his hands a little in a gesture of uncomprehending wonder.

Relaxing then a little from this posture (one got the impression everyone in the tunnel let out a small sigh), he turned with a sweet and gracious smile to Fafhrd and inquired, “But now tell me, old friend, how came you to be parted from your hair? And so very thoroughly, judging from the portions of you I'm able to see. In my underground travels I've lost some skin (and body hair presumably) from friction with sand, gravel, clay, and rock. My garments certainly have suffered a diminishment, as is plain to see. But you, my friend, have not that excuse."

“Let me answer that,” Afreyt demanded with such resolution that no one, even Fafhrd, seemed inclined to contest her claim. She took a deep breath and addressed, chiefly to the Gray Mouser (though all heard, for she spoke very clearly) the following remarkable extended statement.

“Dear Captain Mouser, when you first slipped down into the earth early upon the night of Satyrs’ full and the second of the coming of the cold, it was Captain Fafhrd who set us digging after you here on Goddess Hill. Not all of us agreed with his idea, but when the digging turned up evidence of your passage (your hood, your dagger Cat's Claw, et cetera), we were logically compelled to change our minds. The work begun then has now culminated in the rescue of Captain Mouser by the ladies Cif and Rill after today's miraculous survival underground. All honor to Captain Fafhrd for laying the foundations of this wonderful achievement!"

Gale started to applaud, but none of the others took it up, and when Fingers shook her head at the other girls, she broke off.

Afreyt resumed her extended statement, ignoring the interruption.

“It was at this point, I think, that it began to become apparent, dimly at first, that a supernatural power, or powers, were taking a hand in the developing events.

“In the matter of Captain Mouser, it was the dowsing for him by the Lady Cif and his lieutenant Pshawri which seemed to indicate the Mouser was moving underground at unlikely speeds over incredible distances far beyond the limits of these diggings, even extending out under the Outer Sea.

“Besides that, there's an altogether amazing action that occurred this morning in the cellar of the Lady Cif's house and which Fingers and I both witnessed: the Mouser's saving of Fafhrd from a horrid outlandish death spell by employment of information he could hardly have obtained anywhere in Nehwon nearer than buried Quarmall.” And she gazed fiercely, almost accusingly, at the Mouser.

Gale parted her hands to start another round of applause, but then made a face at Fingers and forbore.

The Mouser endured the steely stare a moment more, then said apologetically, “I'm sorry, Lady Afreyt. I can't fully satisfy your curiosity as to how far I went or all I did below ground. Mostly I recall sucking pebbles to quench my thirst and breathing most shallowly to make best use of the air I scavenged (often having to make do with mephitic gases), and meditating on my sins and those of others (very interesting, some of those). Otherwise I seem to have slept a lot (doubtless a good thing since it reduced my consumption of air) and dreamed some remarkable dreams. So please, Lady Afreyt, continue with your fascinating hypothetical reconstruction of what's happened to us the last two mysterious days—always remembering to end with an explanation of how Fafhrd came to lose his hair. Which was, I believe, the question you set out to answer in the first place."

“That's true,” she said. “Well, Captain Mouser, just as a supernatural element entered your movements underground, enabling you to move to far places at fantastic speeds and causing you considerable wear and tear—” she eyed his translucent jerkin “—a like element began to influence Fafhrd, though functioning in the opposite direction, not below ground, but above.

“Late on the night of Satyrs’ full he got drunk and set out for Salthaven next morning under the influence. For this part of the story we have the evidence of the children Gale and Fingers, who followed him. They saw him set to swimming through the fog and then mount up into the sky in widening spirals.

“Somewhere aloft above Salthaven he disrobed (to lighten ship, he tells me) and dropped his boots, belt, pouch, bracelet, and other gear, which fell on roofs and treetops, whence they were brought to me yesterday, forming a set of objects not unlike the items Captain Mouser left behind him as he traveled through the earth.

“For the rest of my narrative I must depend chiefly on the testimony of its principal actor, given to me earlier today after he recovered from Captain Mouser's spell-breaking.

“To summarize, a short time after lightening ship, Captain Fafhrd was picked up by a cloud-pinnace captained by Queen Frix of Arilia, his one-time paramour, and crewed by a company of her notorious ladies. Being still somewhat under the influence, he was easily enticed into an orgy, during the course of which he was completely shaven, upon the pretext of increasing his pleasure."

“Half the civilized races of Nehwon believe that firmly and act accordingly,” Fingers commented. “They regard all hair as a disfigurement, eyelashes being the one exception."

“Don't come the old hooker on me! Or presume to instruct us in the sexual fashions of so-called civilized races, you cabin-girl princess!” Afreyt told her tartly, violet eyes flashing. “So far I've been inclined to forgive you all the evil you've innocently been mixed up with, but it wouldn't take much to make me change my mind and give you that shrewd spanking you have been asking for!"

The girl drooped her eyes, gave her lips a reproving tap with her fingertips, covered her mouth with a palm and dropped a submissive curtsey. Gale poked her surreptitiously a little above the hips, where the side is soft.

“But is this true, old friend?” the Mouser asked Fafhrd concernedly. “Pardon me, Lady Afreyt, but I'm somewhat shocked."

“I am content with Afreyt's statement of my case,” Fafhrd said stolidly, “and grateful to her for saving me embarrassment."

“Well, then,” the Mouser said, “since we're talking so freely, resolve us: does shaving augment carnal delight? In your case, at any rate?"

“That's not a suitable question for public discussion,” Fafhrd responded somewhat primly. “Ask me in private and I may give you an answer."

Afreyt looked at the Mouser sweetly and gave a little nod before continuing her statement.

“At some point during the night's licentious doings aboard the aerial whorehouse of Queen Frix, Fafhrd succumbed, but whether from an excess of carnal delight, or of brandy and poppy and other narcotic drugs that may have been administered to him, we have no way of knowing.

“Just before dawn the abominable cloud-pinnace landed on Rime Isle on the headland between Salthaven and the Maelstrom and Fafhrd was given a mock funeral which was secretly observed by his long-lost daughter Fingers."

The girl, her eyes still downcast, nodded twice, rapidly.

“With derisive ceremony and soft music,” Afreyt went on, “Fafhrd was laid to rest—abandoned—on a bed of new-sprung mushrooms wet with dew, naked in the dawn's chill save for some ribbons the color of the underclothes of Frix's whores tied in unsightly mockery around his limp member, his flaccid Wand of Eros."

“Lovers’ Mementos,” Fingers explained, “a custom observed in—” she began, then broke off. “Oh pardon me, Lady Afreyt, I didn't mean to speak, I got carried away...."

“I am glad to hear you say so,” that one observed neutrally. “When the sinister funmakers had departed, Fingers's first action was to enrobe her father decently, then guide him still in a stupor to Cif's abode and make her hypnotically-enforced attempt upon his life, which was providentially foiled by Captain Mouser's most timely emergence, as I'm sure you've all heard by now."

“Yes indeed, we've had quite enough of that,” the Gray One said modestly. Then, bowing low, “Thank you, Lady Afreyt, for answering my questions as fully as was possible for you, I'm sure.” Then turning to Fafhrd, “And now, old friend, could you not be induced to add a few words of your own, sort of wrap the whole matter up, as it were?"

Setting his hands on his hips, Fafhrd replied, “Listen, little man, we've had enough of this nonsense. I recall something you said last winter at the dinner we had for you at the Sea Wrack to celebrate your successful trading voyage to No-Ombrulsk. Cif was teasing you about your erotic involvement (bondage and discipline, et cetera) with the Simorgyan sea demoness Ississi, who almost scuppered you and Seahawk.

“You replied to her teasing—manfully, it seemed to me (you blushed)—that you had attempted something somewhat beyond your powers.

“Well, so had I, I confess most emphatically, in this business of Frix and her ladies! I met total defeat in a war of pleasure! So let's have no more of it! For today, at least! I'm sorry, Afreyt, but that had to be said."

“I think so too,” she told him. “Let's all cool down."

“Before some fresh surprises refire our interest,” Rill put in, who was standing close behind the Mouser in the somewhat crowded section of tunnel.

Her words were prophetic, for just then Pshawri, coming from the shaft, edged his way into the press. He was still stripped for running, wearing only loincloth, belt, and pouch, carrying over one arm a robe he'd been handed above but not yet donned. When he saw the Mouser, the young lieutenant's weary face lit up wonderfully, but it was Cif to whom he first spoke.

“Lady,” he said, bowing, “at midnight, following your instructions, I threw into Darkfire's lava pool the talismanic Whirlpool Queller I'd won from the Maelstrom and with which we'd dowsed for Captain Mouser. There was an eruption from which I barely escaped, racing the ensuing weather change south and losing badly. When I crossed the headland I noted Maelstrom had calmed once more."

“That's wondrous news, brave lieutenant,” Cif replied in a ringing voice. Then turning to the Mouser, who was frowning, she dipped rapidly into her pouch. “Before you say anything, Captain, here's something you should read."

The Mouser spread the worn violet-inked sheet, but had not got very far before he motioned Fafhrd to come view Freg's letter with him. So they read it side by side and line by line.

When they got to the bit about the Mouser's tricksiness, Fafhrd muttered, “I always suspected you got at her, you dog,” and he replied, “Cheer up, at least she recognizes your moral superiority."

“Is that my uncouthness or my love?” the big man grumbled.

And when they got to the “triads of moles,” Rill, who'd been sneaking glances, could not resist touching with three fingers the three shoulder moles that showed clearly by leviathan light through the worn-to-gossamer fabric of the Mouser's jerkin. When he glared at her, she laughed and said, “Look at mates to these on Pshawri's side. We're packed too close here to hide anything."

Afreyt lifted the robe from Pshawri's arm and held it for him, saying, “You have my thanks too, Lieutenant.” He thanked her back and let her help him don it.

The reading done, the Mouser gazed quizzically at Pshawri a long moment.

“Still want to work for me, son, now I'm your father? I suppose I could pay you off in some way, if that's your choice."

“Most certainly, sire,” the young man responded. The Mouser spread his arms and they embraced, quite formally to start with.

“Come,” said Cif, moving past them, “it's time we told the others the good news."

They followed her, the Mouser admiring her dragon's breath system of ventilation and going on to praise the bucket lift in the shaft.

Halfway along this route, at the floor of the shaft, Mikkidu appeared, bearing one of the Mouser's gray house robes. The Mouser donned it and thanked him, then stepped in the bucket and was drawn up.

Fafhrd emerged from the tunnel followed by Afreyt and the rest. He drew his hood over his shaven pate, then mounted the shaft swiftly by the ladder of pegs.

As the Mouser swung off at the top, his loosely assembled men gave a cheer. Fafhrd's joined in, redoubling their shouts as their captain came into view and stood beside the Mouser. As the cheering ebbed, they were able to exchange a few words in private as the late summer midday sun shone down from low in the south.

Mouser (indicating the shallow mound of dug earth near where they stood): Mikkidu tells me there's talk of renaming Goddess Hill (formerly Gallows Hill), Mount Mouser.

Fafhrd (a shade resentfully): That's losing no time.

Mouser: Should I suggest Mount Faf-Mou?

Fafhrd: Forget it. I must say, you're looking remarkably fit after your incredibly long sojourn buried.

Mouser: I don't feel that way. I died down there so many times, I doubt I'll ever trust life again.

Fafhrd: For every time you died, you were reborn. Contrariwise, I think you have become Death's dearest friend.

Mouser: That's a most dubious distinction. I'm tired of killing.

Fafhrd: Agreed. Fingers is a joy. She came along barely in time to rescue me from boredom.

Mouser: I'm doubly fortunate—to have been able to instruct my son before I knew he was one.

Fafhrd: I think we can expect more of these strays.

Mouser: Perish the thought!

That day the chief topic of gossip in Godsland was the mysterious vanishment of the troublesome stranger divinity Loki. One of the few deities to know the true explanation was the spider-god Mog.

On a whim Death had sought Mog out to inform him of the continued survival of his chief worshipper, the Gray Mouser, who'd been under Loki's curse, and to boast a bit of the trickery by which he'd managed this, for even Death is vain.

“Actually,” Death confided, “the one to consign Loki firmly to the lava lake was none other than the Gray Mouser's son, who promises also to become a very useful character to me."

“I've good news too of my man Fafhrd, my lapsed Lankhmar acolyte,” limp-wristed Issek, who'd been listening along with Kos, Fafhrd's barbarian father-god, interrupted impudently. “He's had himself shaved entire—in my honor, I presume, as once befell him in Lankhmar."

“Faugh on such effeminate practices,” Kos pronounced.

“Wherever has Death got to?” Issek asked, looking about.

Mog answered, pointing, “I fancy he caught sign of his sister Pain approaching and slipped back to the Shadowland. He's much ashamed of the way she parades about naked, preening herself upon her conquests and inflictions."

And this may very well have been the case, for Death is never cruel or uncouth.

A fortnight later Captain Mouser's and Fafhrd's officers threw them a barracks party, without asking permission, on the strength of one of them now being a blood relative and close member of the inner family.

Haste was needful because next morning Sergeant Skullick was sailing on a fast Sarheenmar smuggler bound for Ilthmar, on a mission for Fafhrd to Fingers's mother Friska after first determining if she were still a free agent and not a brainwashed tool of old Quarmal once more.

“Fingers's memories have grown uncertain again,” the Captain informed his humorous sergeant. “Besides, from now on we must keep a watchful eye on that cunningest wizard. He's sure to be seeking revenge, ever since Captain Mouser so cleverly foiled his try on my own life."

Also aboard the early-sailing smuggler Ghost would be Snee, the most knowledgeable of the Mouser's thieves turned sailor, to bear a message from Pshawri to his mother Freg in Lankhmar and gather information of interest on the Thieves Guild, the Overlord's court, and the Grain Merchant's Cartel, which meant chiefly Hisvin and his daughter Hisvet.

A third passenger aboard Ghost would be Rill, dispatched by Cif and Afreyt to contact witch covens in Ilthmar, Lankhmar, and (if possible) Tovilyis to get news of Friska and Freg.

“It behooves us,” Cif told her friend, “to keep our own tabs on our husbands’ previous bedmates."

Afreyt emphatically agreed.

Fafhrd commented, “I confess I find it strange and somewhat distasteful to be forever sending other men on adventures, rather than setting forth on them myself.” He looked quite youthful in his cap of pale red hair and with pinkish down covering his arms.

“I think my journeying tired me more than yours did you,” the Mouser replied. “Moreover, I look forward to the days, which surely must come, when Arilia falls on hard times and is forced to hire out its airships with their efficient female crews. Their greater speed should make it possible to run things from a home base while still managing an interesting field assignment from time to time."

“You see how their minds work?” Afreyt commented to Cif sotto voce.

THE END